When Scooby-Doo met Peter Max…

A short but delightful BBC special (in two parts) about British animation legend Bob Godfrey. It’s from the early-1970s.

The film contains the following bit of wisdom from Godfrey: “There’s no point in doing something in animation that could be done very much quicker or much easier in live-action. Animation should deal with surreal things, with fantastic things, impossible things, because there are no limitations in animation. The only limitations there are are within the animators themselves. There’s nothing you can’t do. This is the terrifying thing about it, this is the exciting thing about it. You name it, it can be done in animation.”

For a taste of his work, here is a delightful episode of the 1970s children’s series Roobarb, directed and animated by Godfrey.

A few weeks ago it was announced that Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 6 (on sale October 21st) would be the last Golden Collection. It is true, this will be the last - but let me be very clear: Warner Bros. will continue to release new Looney Tunes on DVD on an annual basis for the foreseeable future. There will be more classic cartoon restoration and collectible DVD sets to come (and No “double dipping” is planned). More about that later.

For now, we have an incredible collection of material to savor in Volume 6. Details about the main content of 60 classic Looney Tunes is listed here. Bonus materials will include:

Disc One: Looney Tunes All Stars

Commentaries
Hare Trigger Commentary by Greg Ford
Birth of a Notion Commentary by Mark Kausler
My Favorite Duck Commentary by Jerry Beck

Music Only Tracks
Raw! Raw! Rooster
Jumpin’ Jupiter
Rabbit Rampage
Boyhood Daze

The Looney Tunes Television Specials
Bugs Bunny in King Arthur’s Court [1978 WBTV special]
Daffy Duck’s Easter Eggcitement [1980 WBTV special]

Bonus Cartoons
Sniffles Takes a Trip [1940 WB cartoon]
Hippety Hopper [1949 WB cartoon]
Rabbit Rampage [1955 WB cartoon]
Boyhood Daze [1957 WB cartoon]

Disc Two: Patriotic Pals
Commentaries
Herr Meets Herr Commentary by Greg Ford
Russian Rhapsody Commentary by Mark Kausler
The Draft Horse Commentary by Greg Ford
Fifth Column Mouse Commentary by Jerry Beck

Music Only Track
Yankee Dood It

Friz Freleng at MGM
Poultry Pirates [1938 MGM cartoon]
A Day at the Beach [1938 MGM cartoon]
The Captain’s Christmas [1938 MGM cartoon]
Seal Skinners [1939 MGM cartoon]
Mama’s New Hat [1939 MGM cartoon]

Bonus Cartoons
The Fighting 69 1/2th [1941 WB cartoon]
Hop and Go [1943 WB cartoon]
Confusions of a Nutsy Spy [1943 WB cartoon]

Disc Three: Bosko, Buddy and Merrie Melodies

Commentaries
Shuffle Off to Buffalo Commentary by Historian Jerry Beck
A Cartoonist’s Nightmare Commentary by Historian Jerry Beck

The World of Leon Schlesinger
Introduction by Martha Sigall and Jerry Beck
Crying for the Carolines [1930 WB short]
Haunted Gold Title Sequence
Schlesinger Productions Christmas Party with Optional Commentary by Martha Sigall and Jerry Beck

Bonus Cartoons
I Love a Parade [1932 WB cartoon]
I Like Mountain Music [1933 WB cartoon]
Sittin’ on a Backyard Fence [1933 WB cartoon]
How Do I Know It’s Sunday [1934 WB cartoon]

Disc Four: Most Requested Assorted Nuts (One-Shots)

Commentaries
Fresh Airedale Commentary by historian Greg Ford
The Hole Idea Commentary by animator Mark Kausler

Alternate Audio Programs
The Hole Idea Music Only Track
Martian Through Georgia Music Only Track
Punch Trunk Music and Effects Track
Wild Wild World Music Only Track

Bonus Documentary
Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices (70 mins.)

Bonus Cartoons
Sleepy Time Possum [1951 WB Cartoon]
Punch Trunk [1953 WB Cartoon]
Wild Wild World [1960 WB Cartoon]
Bartholomew versus the Wheel [1964 WB Cartoon]

I urge you to buy the set the day it comes out (or Pre Order the set on Amazon.com). Your purchase of this collection will help keep the cartoons coming, and will strengthen the message to Warner Bros. that the public wish to continue to buying Looney Tunes on DVD.

Leon Schlesinger died on Christmas Day, 1949. He sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944 and spent his last years in an executive job at the studio, the first one dedicated to merchandising the cartoon characters. While he wasn’t technically “Bugs Bunny’s Creator” (as his obituaries claimed) he was a significant figure in the creation of a dozen pop culture icons that will literally live forever.

His obituaries from the Los Angeles Times (below left) and Los Angeles Examiner (below right) are fitting tributes. Click on each thumbnail for larger images:

To answer the many inquires they received at the time, Warner Bros. produced a three page pamphlet, in comic strip style, to explain the production of animation cartoons. Clearly the work of a lower level assistant artist, the artwork isn’t so good, but the information in this 1956 handout is essentially accurate.

Click the thumbnails below to see the pages full size. According to this piece, Fifteen months and fifteen thousand drawings are required to create a Warner Bros. cartoon. Note the caricature of Eddie Selzer (the producer) in panel #1 and Beaky Buzzard in panel #7. Adding fuel to the ongoing script versus storyboard controversy, Bugs is shown typing a story in panel #2, while Daffy is sketching the storyboard in panel #3.

There is still a lot of research to be done in documenting the silent era of animation. Leonard Maltin reports, on his Movie Crazy blog, of the screening of a true rarity/oddity at the recent San Francisco Silent Film Festival:

…a 1925 animated cartoon in two-color Technicolor. The Old Family Toothbrush features a character named Kid Noah in “A New Redhead Satire” filmed in Naturecolor, using the Wilson Wetherald Process. It was so startling to see a cartoon of this vintage in color that I picked up my camera and tried to capture a few frames (above)… The short itself is fairly amusing, executed in fairly typical New York cartoon-studio fashion of the period, with impressive personality animation of its leading character. Still, its origins are something of a mystery: the picture wasn’t registered for copyright, and I can find no evidence of it in my usual reference sources.

Do any of our readers have some clues about this mysterious new discovery?

I admit it. I love seeing classic animation I’ve never seen before. I particularly go nuts for original title sequences of cartoons that had been cut 50 years ago for TV broadcast. Long time readers of this site already know this.

So what is so unusual about this Popeye card above? It’s simply the rarely seen opening graphic to the first post-Fleischer Popeye cartoons. This title treatment (above) only appears at the head of two cartoons - You’re A Sap, Mr. Jap and Alona On The Sarong Seas (both 1942) - immediately after the ousting of Max and Dave Fleischer. The next release (A Hull Of A Mess) is the first to proclaim the series “A Famous Studios Production” (the new entity created to produce cartoons for Paramount release), and feature a new animated title treatment.

More about Popeye opening titles appear here, and Popeye Vol. 3 goes on sale September 30th (amazon link).

Just out from Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean Animation is Cultoons 3, a new DVD set which continues his madness of releasing cartoons that only us die hards would care about. This set features all the uber-rare 1939 Gran’ Pop Monkey series as well as Boyd La Vero’s lost Marty the Monk cartoons. It also has the eccentric foreign-toon Mr. E from Tow City and the Walter Lantz wartime rarity, The Enemy Bacteria. Trust me, this is oddball material, expertly curated and lots of fun.

Stanchfield is doing all of us a big favor - rounding up the odds and ends of cartoon history, using the best prints he can find of the most obscure cartoons ever made. Another new release of note, Grotesqueries: Ghosts, Goblins & Other Magical Moving Picture Illusions is from Blue Mouse Studio (Thunderbean will be distributing it). Chris Buchman and Rex Schneider (with some help from Stanchfield) produced this fantastic DVD featuring all sorts of goodies, both animated and otherwise (and a bunch of really great bonus features. They’ve done a really beautiful job with all the graphics and design… its been in progress for over 2 years! It’s a pretty unusual and cool DVD. It also features a restoration of A Night On Bald Mountain, the 1933 Pinscreen classic by Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker - the best it’s ever looked (restored and licensed from Cecile Starr). Highly recommended!