Woody Dines Out

One of my all-time favorite cartoons is Shamus Culhane's Woody Dines Out (1945). To me, the character in this film really is Woody Woodpecker. He is obsessed with food and sex, making him the Anti-Christ of sorts among cartoon superstars.

It has the simplest plot... Woody is hungry and all of the restaurants in towns are closed (probably because they've had his patronage in the past), except for one, which is really the shop of a feline taxidermist wanting the $100K prize for a "King-Size Stuffed Woodpecker".

That sounds like a pretty generic plot, but this cartoon, as all cartoons under Culhane and Dick Lundy's direction, contains fantastic animation and timing that make it unique. It is this piece below that I feel Pat Matthews is at his zenith. Woody's reaction to the concoction is incredible, his head spinning into all sorts of shapes, changing colors, then his neck stretching skyward and crashing down again.

Sex is a regular source for gags in Culhane's shorts, and the cat's hilarious fantasizing is no exception. Matthews also animated that scene, showing off his tremendous girl drawing abilities. (He and Marc Davis are my favorite 'girl animators' from the Golden Age.)

Plus, only Woody is enough of a gluttonous bastard where he'd eat something handed to him with such a cryptic warning. (The cat is voiced by the tremendously talented Hans Conried by the way.)

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Woody Dines Out 1
Uploaded by thadk

Later in the cartoon, there is a fantastic piece by (my favorite) Emery Hawkins with the cat falling down an elevator shaft. This is another great example of his use of delay timing, particularly when the cat comes to after the fall.

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Woody Dines Out 2
Uploaded by thadk

This short also has one of my absolute favorite endings. Only Woody is the kind of pervert who'd invade another character's fantasy to get the last laugh (literally) before the fade-out. Matthews animated this scene as well, with the great bit of Woody smashing the cat's skull in with the champagne bottle.

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Woody Dines Out 3
Uploaded by thadk

Tom & Jerry "Friends" Modelsheets

I'm really scratching for ideas for new posts and don't really like going for days at a time without an update, so here are some modelsheets to tide you over. These are all of "assorted" characters from the Tom & Jerry series, and were stolen from Cartoon Network's D.O.C. website before it folded up (which is why even these have the CN bug).

Sufferin' Cats (1943)

Zoot Cat (1944)

A Mouse in the House (1947)

Kitty Foiled (1948)

Hatch Up Your Troubles (1949)

Little Runaway (1952)

Push-Button Kitty (1952)

To tie-in, here's a great scene from Zoot Cat... The first half is animated by Ken Muse, and then it does a cut to Irv Spence.

Dem Lambs is Jitterbuggin'!

Here's a segment from one of my all-time favorite cartoons, "Much Ado About Mutton". This scene looks like it's animated by Marty Taras mainly by the way the characters move and look. This was right before the cartoons at Famous became more 'refined' with cleaner animation but more stock poses and gestures.

I like the Famous Studios cartoons and think they're underrated. I definitely like the cartoons of the 40s better than anything Terry did and they are on average better than the last few years of Fleischer output (1940-42 roughly). All of the Blackie the Lamb cartoons are hilarious and feature wonderful animation by Taras, Tendlar, and Gent, and I hope to highlight them in the near future.

Crazy Possum Dancing - Mike Lah

There's three animators that have a really stylized way of moving their characters in the classic cartoons... Art Davis under Frank Tashlin's direction, Carlo Vinci at Terry's, and Mike Lah at MGM. This kind of animation was essentially a predecessor to television's limited animation, but it still has all the benefits that make full animation great.

Mike Lah has a long history with the MGM studio. He was first in George Gordon's short-lived unit at the studio in the early 40s. He then went to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera's unit as a brief replacement for Irv Spence. He and Preston Blair were assigned to direct three Barney Bear cartoons before being knocked back down to an animator again for Tex Avery.

This scene, though, is not from an Avery short, but one of Dick Lundy's best Barney Bear shorts, "The Impossible Possum". This is the kind of animation I like best, when it's timed perfectly to the music, but you can watch it with the sound off and the it is still perfect. Few animators even in the Golden Age were capable of making their animation special and in a class of its own, and Lah was certainly one of them.

The Sheik Boogie Woogie

Walter Lantz's Swing Symphony series was possibly the most 'politically incorrect' one to ever exist in Hollywood animation. Every entry contains either racial stereotypes, sexy gals, booze drinking... And alwaysgreat music and animation.

Shamus Culhane's "Abou Ben Boogie" is no exception. I believe a piece of this film actually had the Miss X's gyrations cropped out before release... It looks lifted from "Greatest Man in Siam" as the movements are almost exactly the same.

Much of the Miss X and Ben Boogie dancing I believe is animated by Pat Matthews. There is also a lot of Grim Natwick (I'm certain the guy who looks like Farmer Alfalfa is his) and Emery Hawkins in this clip.

As you can tell, my copy of this cartoon is in pretty sorry shape, and I would grateful if someone could help me find a better one. (Preferably one with no audio dropout in the first half!)

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Abou Ben Boogie
Uploaded by thadk

Grant Simmons Dogs

[All identifications made by Mike Kazaleh]

Today's post may be known as one of the most obscure posts in animation blog history!

Mike Kazaleh has been gracious enough to help me identify a few animators' styles in the Screen Gems cartoons of the 1940s. One of the best is Grant Simmons, who did some incredibly funny and slick animation throughout his whole career (up to his untimely demise in 1971). He was at Screen Gems for much of its 1940s run.

The first short up is a rare classic, "Flora". In this great film noir parody, the character designs are full of Simmons' influence, particuly with 'Ronny'. Simmons animated the scenes where:
- He eats the chocolates
- Drinks the martini by the mantle
- Looks in the window and sees 'Flora', rings bell, tips hat, butler hits him with mallet
- Sits on bridge, jumps, and hangs from bridge

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Flora (1948)
Uploaded by thadk

The second film was released under the Walter Lantz banner by Universal, "Broadway Bow Wow's". This, and "Dig That Dog", were made independently by the Grantray studio, Simmons and Ray Patterson's post-MGM studio. Lantz gave them the go-ahead to write and direct several theatrical cartoons for him. There was no need for them to hire their own music director or background people since Lantz people needed the work. Lantz went so far as to have have a complete budget worked out for every facet of these two cartoons, but was shrewd enough to be sure he obtained ownership of them outright. (copied and pasted from The Walter Lantz-O-Pedia, which I co-run)

After watching this film, you'll see how jarringly similar these two shorts are, mainly in the design of the dog, and the framing device.

Ray Patterson definitely animated the opening and closing sequences on the bridge. Simmons animated the short sequence from "My ears began to ring.." to "She had me going in circles...", the shot of John crying at the racetrack, then running off screen, the shot of him swallowing his pride where he walks away rubbing his ass, and the shot of him yelling in the theatre and getting grabbed by the usher. Patterson may have animated the rest of the cartoon.

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Broadway Bow Wow's (1954)
Uploaded by thadk

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