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Posted 6:19 PM by Dave

Clampett vs. The World

About ten years before he died, Bob Clampett seemed to be everywhere, promoting (and some say puffing up) his role in creating the Warner Bros. cartoons, wearing those jackets Sody made for him and that Roy Orbison haircut. And all the other creators were up in arms.

None was more so literate on the matter than Chuck Jones. And one day in 1975, as Clampett-soaked projects like "Bugs Bunny Superstar" and "Camera Three: The Boys From Termite Terrace" clogged the psyche of adolescent cartoon fans, he decided to vent to Tex Avery. (Tex, by the way, would have celebrated his 100th birthday last week.) Jim Engel, longtime cartoon and comics fan, has scanned a copy of the letter with Tex's notations on Scott Shaw!'s Oddball Cartoons website. It's interesting reading and you get a good picture of the cameraderie most of the WB cartoonists shared. You've read the excerpts, now get the whole picture.

Labels: animation, Warner Bros.

Posted 4:41 PM by Dave

Warren Batchelder 1917-2007

I don't keep my ear to the animation grapevine as I once did, but I can't let the passing back in February of former Warner Bros. and DePatie-Freleng animator and director Warren Batchelder slip by. He died back on February 12 just a couple of months shy of his 90th birthday. He's a guy who's just got a lot of entries in my animation pages here at davemackey.com. He was one of the undersung greats of the industry.

Born on April 18, 1917 in Los Angeles, Warren Batchelder had been hanging around Warner Bros. as an assistant, most notably with Virgil Ross, since at least the mid-1930's, but it wasn't until 1958 that he was promoted to full animator in the Robert McKimson unit. His greatest glories were ahead as he was one of the primary animators at Friz Freleng's studio for its entire history, getting hundreds of credits on Pink Panther, Inspector and Tijuana Toads cartoons and all their various TV shows.

Marvel Productions was his next stop where he was director on many of their series including "G.I. Joe" and "Jem". There was even a brief stop at Warner Bros. where he worked on episodes of "Tiny Toon Adventures" as a character layout artist. Batchelder stayed active in animation for about another decade after that, finally putting the pencils away in 2002.

Labels: animation, Warner Bros.

Posted 5:25 PM by Dave

Music Time!

For your enjoyment, here is a college band playing the theme to "Family Guy", music by Walter Murphy, arrangement by Roger Holmes.

Labels: animation, music

Posted 8:19 PM by Dave

Happy Birthday, June

June Foray's 90th birthday was yesterday. June is the gifted voice actress heard on millions of cartoons since the dark ages, and she's also been quite involved with the ASIFA animation society.

We are lucky to still have June with us and we still hear her voice from time to time on new projects. I doubt we've heard the last of her.

Labels: animation

Posted 5:45 PM by Dave

The Summer Of Woody

In a busy summer with lots of good cartoon releases out there (starting with today's release of the complete Batfink series), Woody Woodpecker is not to be denied. Universal is going to be presenting a DVD set of the first several years of Woody Woodpecker cartoons, including all of his 1940's cartoons and some from the early 1950's, after producer Walter Lantz' brief sojourn at United Artists and subsequent temporary closure of the studio. (Many of Woody's friends will be onboard as well.) This will be released on Tuesday, July 24. (Universal, of course, previously released many of these cartoons on 8mm film through its Castle Films subsidiary - remember those? If you do, you're probably my age or older!)

In honor of said release, StoryMakers Studio is going to be mounting a special tribute to Woody and Walter on Wednesday, July 11, 2007. It is a free event at Mann's Chinese Theater. Please visit this site for more information about this special event, which will include the participation of June Foray, Leonard Maltin, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, and animator Phil Roman. If you can't make the event you'll be able to see it online. More details at that site.

Labels: animation

Posted 3:37 PM by Dave

Cut To The Chase

Someone at DePatie-Freleng must have thought spy films were good fodder for cartoon plots, and this forms the basis of the final theatrical Road Runner cartoon, "Sugar And Spies" (1966). Still not even close to the finesse of the Jones efforts, this is better than the Rudy Larriva cartoons talked about earlier on this blog. Directed by Robert McKimson and actually made on the DePatie-Freleng lot by the regular DePatie-Freleng crew, it's one of the few DFE cartoons to have an actual score (as opposed to stock cues) by Walter Greene, whose composing skills were given more of a workout over at Walter Lantz. I apologize for the Spanish soundtrack... don't quite know how to get that off. But the intrusions are blissfully few. Here it is. (Thanks to Harry for helping me fix the autoplay problem)

Labels: animation, Warner Bros.

Posted 4:55 PM by Dave

A Black Mark In Warner Bros. Cartoon History

Perhaps the only Warner Bros. cartoons not worthy of the name were the Road Runner cartoons produced by Format Films (acting as subcontactor for DePatie-Freleng Enterprises) under the mis-direction of Rudy Larriva. (They were bracketed by two far better cartoons actually produced at DePatie-Freleng with Bob McKimson directing.)

As his April Fool's joke, animation scholar Thad Komorowski has given us a pretty good overview of why Larriva's work is so rank. Sure, Larriva had at least one of Chuck Jones' animators aboard (Bob Bransford), but the other artists - which at times included even the great Virgil Ross - couldn't make a silk purse out of a coyote's ear. To borrow from my WB filmography, "Watch these cartoons and you'll know that WB censored the wrong 11 films!"

Labels: animation, Format Films, Warner Bros.

Posted 7:36 AM by Dave

More Boop

Here's one from the period where Betty Boop was reduced to cameo appearances in cartoons starring other characters like Pudgy, Wiffle Piffle, and Grampy. Those characters were each the invention of a specific Fleischer staff animator; respectively, Myron Waldman, Tom Johnson, and Dave Tendlar. This 1938 example, produced shortly before Fleischer moved to Miami, is called "Riding The Rails" and features Pudgy, here animated by Myron Waldman and Hicks Lokey (later a fixture at Hanna-Barbera). This one has a sprightly music score featuring lighter instruments. (There was a Popeye a few years earlier that used similar instrumentation... I think it was "Let's Get Movin'" "Cops Is Always Right".) So you see, the later Boops aren't entirely worthless.

Labels: animation, Betty Boop, Fleischer Studios

Posted 9:07 PM by Dave

Batfink DVD Coming!

Well, someone got the hint! Shout! Factory is going to be releasing all 100 episodes of Batfink on DVD on June 19, 2007. You can order it from Amazon here... Batfink: The Complete Series

Labels: animation, Batfink, Hal Seeger

Posted 7:07 AM by Dave

More Fun With Popeye!

More Popeye for your Wednesday morning. Here, for your enjoyment is a 1952 Popeye cartoon, "Shuteye Popeye", complete with commentary track provided by what sounds like a couple of Italians who've been up late. They even try to read the credits but don't get past I. Sparber.

Labels: animation, paramount cartoons, popeye

Posted 6:05 PM by Dave

Another Cartoon Classic Comes To Video!

How come I'm just now finding out that one of the class DVD distributors, Shout! Factory, is coming out with The Milton The Monster Show on video on March 20? This is the one we've all been waiting for and hopefully the Hal Seeger Studios crew did a good restoration job on these. Order yours from Amazon (and we get some €'s) by clicking on the monster's good name.

(P.S. to Shout! Factory: You should really hire that writer who came up with the first line of the ad copy on your site for the Milton DVD's!)

Labels: animation, Hal Seeger, Milton The Monster Show

Posted 10:57 PM by Dave

THE BAT IS BACK

Forty years ago, the late Hal Seeger did one of the very few authorized parodies of the "Batman" character, "Batfink". We have a wealth of information on the cartoons here.

But the real reason for this post is to welcome that bat with supersonic sonar radar and wings like a shield of steel back to TV! Boomerang has brought the Bat and his pal Karate back for another TV go-round, airing Saturdays and Sundays at 12:00 noon for a half hour. Each show features six Batfink adventures and they are going in episode order.

We're still waiting for the DVD release here in the US... we'd love to give you more favorable news on that, but now you folks in England will have to settle for your deluxe box set.

Labels: animation, Batfink