11 Comments »   posted in Animators, Disney

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If you are looking for a gift for someone this Christmas or just in the mood to buy something for yourself, my number one choice (and favorite picture book of the last year) would be Kirk Demarais’s:  Life of the Party: A Visual History of the S. S. Adams Company.

S.S. Adams was the mastermind behind many of the most popular gag/novelty pranks of the last century, including the Joy Hand Buzzer, the Dribble Glass, the Snake Can, the Squirting Nickel, the Bug in an Ice Cube, the Exploding Cigar, and hundreds of others.   As one writer put it,  “The man’s rivals must have felt toward him as other dramatists have felt about Shakespeare.” I’m not exactly sure who his rivals were – other fart-cushion manufacturers, maybe? – but the sentiment is right on.

This book is treasure and nostalgia all wrapped up in one, like reading the back of an old comic book and trying to decide whether to order the vacuum cleaner hovercraft or a new pair of X-ray specs.   The images are often enlarged so you can really appreciate the original art and packaging genius of Louis M. Glackens*, the cartoonist who Adams hired to bring all of his products to life.  I also confess a soft spot for the personal touch of ordering it direct from the factory in Neptune, New Jersey.  I wish all books were like this.

In 1906 Adams discovered the existence of a potent chemical called Dianisidine and began marketing it in small vials labeled  “Cachoo Sneezing Powder” (the company was originally called the “Cachoo Sneeze Powder Company”).   The powder was so powerful that you could fill a room with sneezing people simply by blowing it through a keyhole or a crack in a door.

While Adams was busy exploiting Dianisidine stateside for laughs, the Germans were on the other side of the Atlantic stuffing it into their artillery shells, wreaking further disorder in the trenches of their enemies as the chemical also inhibits breathing.  Fortunately for Adams, he had a good 35 years before the F.D.A. decided that Dianisidine wasn’t as “harmless” as his label proclaimed and banned it.  By then, Adams had built an entire business with the money he made and had already used it to create countless other novelty items, some of them just as successful, if not more so, than sneezing powder.

Asked to share some advice on what makes a great novelty item, Adams once said, “The best idea is to work with an ordinary everyday object which is around the house.”  Case in point is his “Snake Jam Jar”, also known as the “Snake Nut Can.”

Apparently, around 1915 Adams had a habit of leaving the jam jar lid unscrewed. His wife wasn’t too happy about it and she began checking the lid to catch him in an act of neglect.   So, Adams rigged the jar by stuffing a wire coil wrapped in colorful fabric, and sat in the wings waiting for his wife to come in and inspect it.  The rest is history: when the 4-ft “snake” jumped out of the jar at his wife, she let out a scream so loud that Adams knew instantly that he had a new classic.

You will spend hours soaking up the thousands of images in this unbelievably rich and beautifully-produced “Visual History.”  If you’re lucky, you may even find yourself curled up under the sheets with a flashlight and a magnifying glass, feeling just like a kid again.

Get it here directly from the S.S. Adams factory in Neptune, New Jersey.

*Glackens was also a successful director and animator.  Check his filmography here.  If anyone can turn up a sample of his work online, please share it in the comments.

6 Comments »   posted in Books, Cartoon Culture

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Warner Bros. Animated Industrials

December 16, 2008 3:00 am

Back in September I wrote several posts about a stash of Warner Club News magazines I came into featuring rare photos and information about the Warner Bros. Cartoon Department. Here’s one more. The photo above comes from the February 1958 issue and it shows the Commercial and Industrial Film animation crew in conference – left to right: Chuck Jones, Leo Salkin, Lou Scheimer, Maurice Noble, Owen Crump (producer), Carol Chaka (secretary) and Richard Hobson (executive). Dave DePatie (not pictured, was a production coordinator and editor in this division at the time).

In 1956, Warner Bros. created the WBTV Commercial and Industrial Films Division which produced dozens of films – live action, animated and sometimes combining both. When animation was needed it was coordinated through the Cartoon Department, and utilized the skills of their veteran animators and directors. They created TV spots, many made exclusively for sponsors of Warner Bros, TV shows – for Eastman Kodak, Gillette, General Electric, Nabisco, Ford, Kelloggs, Crest, Camay, etc. Perhaps their biggest project was the Bell Systen Science series. My guess is that in the photo above was taken during the production of Gateways To the Mind (1958) which contained this scene below (which I found on You Tube, forgive the pitch to purchase the DVD, I’m not selling, but you can purchase it here):

3 Comments »   posted in Classic

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The Twelve Animated Days of Christmas, #3

December 16, 2008 12:51 am

A 1966 holiday interstitial that aired on CBS.
Directed and designed by R.O. Blechman.
Animated by Ed Smith Willis Pyle.
(Thanks, Richard O’Connor, for the correction)

22 Comments »   posted in Classic

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Compost by Jim and Diane Downer

December 15, 2008 9:36 pm

I saw Compost a few months back and was really pleased to discover that it’s online. It’s a beautiful piece of work. Husband-and-wife filmmaking team Jim and Diane Downer talk about their filmmaking process in this interview with Rooftop Films:

“It wasn’t apparent to me at first, but now looking back on the project I see it as a documentary, a record of all the walks Diane and I took together with our four dogs to collect specimens. Things go by so quickly on the screen, when in reality they took months to collect and assemble. There’s a lot of wonderfully peaceful memories associated with this film. Also, along with being entertaining the film also has scientific value. It represents a cross section, a sampling of Rochester’s biomass. Grade-school children always seem to make that connection when they watch the film.”

7 Comments »   posted in Shorts

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Delgo Has One of Worst Openings in the History of Cinema

December 15, 2008 6:53 pm

The CG animated feature Delgo opened last weekend and nobody went to see it. According to Box Office Mojo, Delgo had the worst opening ever for a film that opened in more than 2,000 theaters earning just $511,290 or $237 per theater.

Moments like this really make one pause and reflect. What is the world coming to when an animated film with the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Chris Kattan, Anne Bancroft, Eric Idle, Val Kilmer, Lou Gossett Jr, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds and Kelly Ripa isn’t a box office blockbuster? A story that makes sense and visuals that don’t make you want to heave are quaint touches, but the filmmakers behind Delgo understood where it really counted: celebrity voice actors. They hired every B- and C-list actor this side of Dancing With the Stars and somehow still failed. You know the recession is affecting Americans deeply when they no longer want to see Chris Kattan and Kelly Ripa voicing their CG characters.

Here’s a little taste of what all of America missed last weekend.

102 Comments »   posted in Business, CGI, Essentials, Feature Film

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MGM Shorts Story

December 15, 2008 3:00 am

Here’s something you may not have seen. During the 1930s, MGM published a bi-monthly in-house magazine, MGM Shorts Story devoted to its numerous short subjects. Distributed primarily to its exhibitors and Loews Theatre managers, the oversized slick magazine devoted many of its pages to its latest cartoons and occasionally featured a cover story related to its animation studio. The November-December 1939 issue took a closer look at Harman Ising with this article below.

This is basically a studio publicity piece, but its interesting to note Harman and Ising defending their use of animal characters (over humans) and the spin that having no “star characters” frees them to experiment with different ideas. (Click thumbnails below to read):

5 Comments »   posted in Animators, Classic

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The Twelve Animated Days of Christmas, #2

December 15, 2008 12:16 am

An excerpt from The Story of Christmas, a 1963 NBC special with artwork created by Sleeping Beauty art director Eyvind Earle.

2 Comments »   posted in Classic

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