About a year ago, Milton Knight sent us a link to a excerpt from a rare series of Egyptian cartoons created in the 1930s by the pioneering Frenkel Brothers. Knight has just found a complete “Mish-Mish” cartoon on You Tube, from a broadcast on Serge Bromberg’s Cartoon Factory a few years ago. In the interests of animation history, I think it’s worth a look.

Of this film, Knight notes “the pirating of the Van Beuren Tom & Jerry’s Wot a Night and In the Bag, both soundtracks and animation.” I’ll note (or warn you of) the ethnic and racial stereotypes — and the crude animation, which I find entertaining; strangely hypnotic and bizarre, in a good way.

If you want more Frenkel Brothers goodness, here’s a 40-second clip compiled from several other of their films.

Submitted for your educational pleasure – another historical find from our friends at the Van Eaton Galleries: The patent for Max Fleischer’s bouncing ball cartoons (filed in 1925, granted in 1926).

Click on thumbnails below to read the convoluted legalese that Fleischer uses to describe his new technique. Note they use Daisy Bell (“A Bicycle Built For Two”) as a sample lyric. Great find – thanks Mike!

Researching early sound cartoons is fascinating. By studying these efforts, it becomes easier to see why Disney’s Steamboat Willie was such a sensation and how Mickey Mouse became a superstar. In addition to Iwerks’ polished animation, Willie’s synchronized sound track is clearly more sophisticated, compared to the competition. But that isn’t to say the initial sound cartoons of Disney’s rivals don’t have their charms.

A few months ago, on Cartoon Brew TV, we posted the first Van Beuren cartoon with sound, Dinner Time (1928) – and today we present another rarity: the first Columbia Krazy Kat cartoon, Ratskin (1929). For decades, this cartoon was considered lost, but several years ago Sony’s restoration team found the negative and restored the visual element. However, the soundtrack was still lost. Luckily, I was able to show the restored film, sans soundtrack, at an Asifa-Hollywood screening in 2006. Knowing I might never see it again, I video taped it off the screen with my hand held camera.

Recently, Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project located a rare Vitaphone disc for Ratskin (it was found in Australia) and sent me a copy on CD. Next, our friend David Gerstein graciously put these two elements together — and now we are able to see and hear the film as intended (see embed below).

Gerstein, on his Ramapith blog today, posts a companion commentary about some of the songs used on the track. It’s remarkable how many “song gags” musician Rosario Bourdon managed to squeeze onto the track. Listen for Please Go Away and Let Me Sleep, Oh How I Hate To Get Up In the Morning, You’re In The Army Now, Turkey In The Straw, A Hunting We Will Go, Mean To Me, Lucky Lindy, London Bridges, Glow Worm and several others, appropriately accompanying the on screen action.

Thanks to David Gerstein, Ron Hutchinson, Michael Schlesinger and our friends at Sony Restoration (whom we hope will contact Hutchinson to reunite the actual picture neg and track) we can now sit back and, for the first time in 80 years, watch Ratskin. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Animation historian J.B. Kaufman adds this historical tidbit: “At the risk of telling you things you already know, I’ll just point out that the title, Ratskin, is surely a takeoff on the Paramount silent film Redskin, which was also released in 1929. The action in the cartoon is nothing like the plot of Redskin, but I don’t think that title can possibly be a coincidence.”

The Haggin Museum in Stockton, California is hosting an “animation family day at the museum” this month. To augment the activities, their archive pulled some untitled animation drawings in their collection for display — and wanted to find out more about them. They contacted me through my Cartoon Research website and I was able to identify much of the material (click thumbnail samples above).

Apparently the museum is possession of a cache of original pencil animation for a series of 1937 Columbia Screen Gems cartoons. Artwork above is from the shorts (left to right): I Want To Be An Actress (a Scrappy cartoon), Spring Festival (a Color Rhapsody) and The Masque Raid (a Krazy Kat cartoon). And there’s material from other films as well.

About this find, curator Kimberly D. Bowden wrote:

“Until now they have been tucked away in the archive. The museum has about 40 drawings for each of the images I sent you and a few other series as well. My guess is that the drawings came to the museum during Earl Rowland’s directorship (1937-1963). He sought out illustrators and their relatives and requested paintings and sketches for the museum.

From this campaign we have comic artists, editorial cartoonists, and commercial artists. Our J. C. Leyendecker collection is currently touring the country. As interest in illustration art continues to grow, I am able to share more of the museum’s hidden treasures with the public. These are the only animation drawings I have come across as yet and I am so pleased to be able to properly attribute them to Screen Gems studio. Thank you solving this long-standing mystery!”

Attached is a little video the museum created to show kids how the animated drawings on display would become ‘animated’.

If you find yourself in northern California this month, it might be a good idea to check out The Haggin Museum at 1201 N. Pershing Avenue in Stockton.