Warner Bros. and TCM are running a Classic Film Festival in Hollywood on April 22nd-25th, showcasing restored prints of more than a dozen classic movies on the big screens of the historic Chinese and Egyptian Theatres. Robert Osborn will be hosting in person, Jerry Lewis will introduce The King Of Comedy, Tony Curtis will present Some Like it Hot and Leonard Maltin will introduce a program of classic MGM and Warner bros. live action shorts.

However, for cartoon buffs, here’s a big screen program we’ve been waiting decades to see publicily:

Removed from Circulation: A Cartoon Collection – Presented by author Donald Bogle

Donald Bogle, author of Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: A History of Black Hollywood, will present cartoons that have been kept from the public eye because of negative racial or cultural stereotypes. The collection includes several classic Warner Bros. cartoons. Bogle will provide insight into the racial attitudes of the times in which the cartoons were created. Titles include Clean Pastures (1937), Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarves (1943), Goldilocks and the Jivin’ Bears (1944), Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land (1931), The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938), Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time (1936), Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943) and Uncle Tom’s Bungalow (1937).

My sources say all the infamous Censored 11 cartoons will be screened. A complete list of all previously announced programming for the TCM Classic Film Festival is available here. Festival passes and additional information are available at www.tcm.com/festival.

Patricia Zohn writes about Disney’s ink-and-paint girls in this month’s Vanity Fair. She started researching the topic after speaking to her aunt, Rae Medby McSpadden, a former ink-and-paint artist. Most of the facts will be familiar to animation history buffs, but it’s a well-written slice-of-life piece that adds color to the bygone days:

During Snow White, it was not at all unusual to see the “girls”—as Walt paternalistically referred to them—thin and exhausted, collapsed on the lawn, in the ladies’ lounge, or even under their desks. “I’ll be so thankful when Snow White is finished and I can live like a human once again,” Rae wrote after she recorded 85 hours in a week. “We would work like little slaves and everybody would go to sleep wherever they were,” said inker Jeanne Lee Keil, one of two left-handers in the department who had to learn everything backward. “I saw the moon rise, sun rise, moon rise, sun rise.” Painter Grace Godino, who would go on to become Rita Hayworth’s studio double, also remembered the long days merging into nights: “When I’d take my clothes off, I’d be in the closet, and I couldn’t figure it out: am I going to sleep or am I getting up?”

I did a post about Cathedral Films back in 2007 when we found a connection between this religious film strip producer and Bill Hanna and Gene Hazelton. Filmstrips are still in a side-alley of animation history that has yet to be explored. Artists from MGM, Disney and others worked on these after hours. Here’s another filmstrip somebody posted in its entirety on the internet, and artwork here is pretty good (note Paul Frees as the voice of the ocean). Anyone recognize the art style?

Scribble Junkies, the new commentary blog by animators Bill Plympton and Pat Smith, is heating up. Yesterday, Bill posted about why he thinks the “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence in Dumbo is the “weakest point” of the film. Today, Pat followed up with an entry about why that sequence is “the single most influential piece of animation” that he’s seen. It’s fun seeing two solid animators duke it out over a classic piece of animation that we normally take for granted.

Film historians have long declared the year 1939 the pinnacle of Hollywood movie making. But what about the cartoons?

Cartoon buff Ted Watts is reviewing all 158 Hollywood cartoon short subjects (and one feature) produced in that banner year, 70 years ago, one at a time in release order, on a new blog called Cartoons of 1939.

Ted provides plot information, credits and lots of frame grabs. It’s a fun idea. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.

It’s been over a year since we heard anything about Classic Media’s attempt to revive Mr. Magoo in something called Kung Fu Magoo. Our friends at TVShowsOnDVD now report that Vivendi Entertainment will release the film direct-to-video on May 11th. (Click image at left to see box art). The 80-minute feature, produced at Mexico’s Anima Estudios, pits Quincy Magoo and his 12-year-old nephew, Justin, against giant robotic spiders, ninjas on jet skis and mutant Beasteens which are half animal and half teenage girl. Jim Conroy (Ruff Ruffman, Kenny the Shark) provides the voice of Mr. Magoo. Doesn’t sound good…

This six-page article about Chuck Jones was written by John Canemaker in the late-1970s. I don’t remember how I got it or where the article was published (perhaps John can tell us himself), but I found the scans a few days ago and had to share them. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Chuck had written a book of drawing and animation advice like the kind that he shares with Canemaker in this piece?

UPDATE: John Canemaker informs us that the article is from the March 1980 issue of Cartoonist Profiles (#45).

I’m not going to pretend like I fully understand what’s going on in this short—alienation and dehumanization in modern society is always a safe guess—but there are a lot of interesting visual ideas in this 1968 Japanese short directed by Tatsuo Shimamura. A bio of the prolific Shimamura can be found on AniPages Daily, while this short can be purchased on Volume 10 of Something Weird’s Classic Cartoon Rarities collection.

(Thanks, Brian Lonano)