Last night, Bill Kroyer and I participated in an animation panel at the Hammer Museum, which followed a screening of some newly restored silent era cartoons by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Those films have now been posted online on a new website established by the UCLA Library.

An initial eleven films are now available to view or download, with titles including Blackton’s Enchanted Drawing (1900), tinted prints promoting The Lost World and other interesting obscure shorts and orphan films. They can be viewed silent or with a choice or musical scores (with audio commentary by composer Michael Mortilla), some with Preservationist audio commentary (by Jere Guldin), each with historical notes (by me, Jerry Beck), an Historical Overview essay by Mark Langer and a Study Guide prepared by UCLA which notes much of their animation holdings, papers, prints and materials available for further study.

If the early history of animation is of interest to you, this is a good site to know. And I’ve been told the Archive will be adding more material to it as time goes on. Check it out, here.

Starting next week, the touring exhibition From Richie Rich to Wendy, The Art of Harvey Comics will make a stop in L.A. with rare comic book and animation artwork on display (and some for sale) at the Van Eaton Gallery. On view for only one week, Saturday May 8th through Saturday May 15th, Van Eaton will augment the Harvey exhibit with a wealth of rare material from Paramount’s Famous Studios (the creators of Casper the Friendly Ghost, Little Audrey, Baby Huey, Buzzy the Crow and Herman & Katnip) and its predessesor, Fleischer Studios. There will be rare model sheets, pencil animation art, and cel set ups from Casper, Popeye, Superman, Color Classics, Noveltoons, Little Lulu and others.

There’s an opening reception on Saturday night (May 8th, 7pm -10pm) and I wouldn’t miss it. Schedule permitting, veteran Harvey editor Sid Jacobson may be joining us. The reception is open to the public, but they would prefer you RSVP at (818) 788-2357. The Van Eaton Galleries are located at 13613 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, CA. For more information on Harvey Comics, check the Facebook page.

Heads up on another screening I’m involved with next month in L.A.: From Inkwell to Desktop: A Selection of Early Hand Drawn and Digital Animation.

The program will begin at 7:30pm on Friday May 7th at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theatre in Westwood. I will be appearing with Bill Kroyer on a panel discussing how the techniques of creating animation have changed since the earliest days of cinema.

The first half of the show will highlight recent restorations of silent animated shorts (soon to be available online as part of a new website run by the UCLA Archive’s Research and Study Center), while the second half features pioneering digital shorts, such as Peter Foldès Hunger (1974) and John Lasseter’s earliest work at Pixar. The silent cartoons will include 35mm prints of: J. Stuart Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing (1900); Indoor Sports (1920); Joys and Glooms “Her Minute” (1921) Directed by John C. Terry; Animated Hair Cartoon No. 18 (1925) and others. A complete list of the films being screened is posted here.

This program is part of a larger film series running throughout May at the Wilder Theatre, From Nitrate to Digital: New Technologies and the Art of Cinema. For ticket information and other Archive screenings click here.

An odd rarity by Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka that probably works best in a dark theater. It’s available with twelve of his other shorts on the dvd, The Astonishing Works of Osamu Tezuka.

Gene Deitch just informed us of the passing of his long-time personal friend Allen Swift. Swift (born Ira Stadlen) was best known for voicing numerous cartoon characters including Simon Bar Sinister (in Underdog), Odie on King Leonardo and most of the voices for the 1960’s underwater puppet show Diver Dan. Swift was also well-known for hosting the Popeye cartoon show (September 10, 1956 to September 23, 1960) on WPIX in New York City. Swift did the majority of the voices in Rankin/Bass’s Mad Monster Party, and supplied character voices for the NBC Howdy Doody Show. He was Tooter Turtle and Clint Clobber. He did voices in Richard Williams’ Raggedy Ann and Andy and John Dilworth’s Courage The Cowardly Dog, as well as in Gene Deitch’s 1960-61 group of Tom and Jerry cartoons (especially memorable in Dickie Moe).

In tribute we re-post the Deitch-Pintoff Terrytoon classic Flebus, with all voices by Allen Swift (above) and one of Swift’s Popeye children’s records (as Captain Allen Swift), below.

Gene Deitch writes:

Maxime Stadlen, Allen Swift’s daughter phoned me the terrible news that Allen has died. Allen Swift, who did the voices of Howdy Doody and the other characters, who did all of the voices on PUMP TROUBLE and DEPTH STUDY, which you will soon be showing, and who has been by best personal friend for 58 years, is gone. He was they last of my American buddies. Even though here for 50 years, hardly a year went by without a visit to his 54th Street apartment, nor a day go by without email and most recently Skype visits. It’s a devastating loss. I felt something awful must be happening, because just as the Howdy Doody film was about to go online, I was unable to reach him or his wife or anyone in his family. This even is something we have been talking about for the past few months and weeks, as the story of the film’s recovery evolved. I’m crushed. We were both born in 1924, thus just a few months difference in age, but Allen has been suffering with a series of health calamities for several years, since he fell and broke his hip while walking his dog. From that moment, one thing led to another…

And now, “the man of a thousand voices” who used many, many of them in my films, is silenced. To further the pain, no planes are flying from Europe, and the airports are jammed with people waiting in vain to go where they need to go. So, I must grieve from here…

We grieve with you Gene. We lost one of the greats today.

Cartoon Research continues….

Earlier this week we posted about a vintage Leon Schlesinger studio program for a Christmas play starring animator Harold Soldinger. Shortly after that post, I received an email from Soldinger’s son Steven. He’s been trying to communicate with people who knew his father, and I put him in touch with Martha Sigall.

Steven sent Martha a vintage photo (below left, which he obtained from the indispensable Michael Barrier) of his dad with some the Looney Tunes artists at a Christmas party and asked her to identify anyone she could. Steven and Martha have allowed me to share this pic with our cartoon-loving readership. Click thumbnails below to see photos at full size. Martha says:

“The people in the picture with the Christmas tree are left top row: Harold Soldinger, Warren Batchelder. The fellow he has his arms around, I don’t know. And, left of him is Bob Matz. Right of him is Fred Jones. Then, Herman Cohen. Leaning on Herman is Paul Smith. Mike Maltese has the paper hat and beard. Next to him is Lloyd Vaughn and Lee Halpern. I don’t know the fellow who is playing the priest.”

UPDATE: Additional identification has been confirmed. Top row, Harold Soldinger, Les Larson (the priest), Mike Maltese, Paul Smith (bending over), Lloyd Vaughan, Lee Halpern.
Bottom row; Warren Batchelder, Chuck McKimson, Bob Matz, Fred Jones, Herman Cohen. The photo was taken in 1938.

I love this T-shirt design by Rodrigo Leonardo Batista Ferreira (aka rodrigobhz). Ferreira submitted this to Threadless.com and won their weekly contest. Now you can purchase it as a limited edition tee here. How many characters can you name?

(Thanks, Tara O’Neil)

Mike Van Eaton comes up with animation odds and ends all the time. I have no purpose in posting these except that I find them fascinating and I know there are at least twelve of you out there who might find these equally interesting. Click the thumbnails below to examine them at large size. The first one (below left) is some sort of Christmas card to Ub Iwerks from his staff (note signatures from Irv Spence, Lou Zukor, Brad Case, Jerry Hathcock and what I assume are ink & paint staff). The next item is the cover (below center) and program interior (below right) for the Schlesinger studio’s Sketch Pad Varieties, written by Chuck Jones and starring several familiar staffers. This was the “second annual revue” – I wonder how many of these they performed? And wouldn’t it be cool to find Jones’ script for this play?