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!

This Wednesday, July 2nd, Stuart Shostack will broadcast a rare, new, interview with Max Fleischer’s nephew, Bernie Fleischer. Joined by Fleischer Studios historian Ray Pointer, Stu promises that the interview will cover everything from the invention of the Rotoscope and the Helen Kane lawsuit, to the 1937 strike, the move to Miami and the eventual Paramount takeover. Plus, Bernie will talk about visiting the studio during the 1930s and recording his voice tracks for the Fleischer’s 1940 two-reeler, Raggedy Ann and Andy (he was Andy). The show will be broadcast over internet radio live (which means no downloads), beginning Wednesday July 2 at 7pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific. It’ll be rebroadcast each day for the next six days at the the same time. Listen to it here.

Here’s a rare treat: El Mono Relojero (The Clockmaking Monkey - Argentina, 1938) is only surviving film by the creator of the first animated feature (El Apostol, 1917), Quirino Cristiani (who also created the world’s first animated sound feature, Peludópolis in 1931). The rest of his films perished in a fire in 1962. Oscar Grillo says the voice is by Pepe Iglesias (aka “El Zorro”), the actor who later dubbed into Spanish the voice of the fox in Disney’s Pinocchio. A few months ago Jorge Finkielman posted a rare cel from this film on the Animation Show forum. For more about Cristiani, read Giannalberto Bendazzi’s 1983 article on AWN.

John and Faith Hubley in Annecy

Cima Balser, the wife of animation director Bob Balser, has written a fantastic piece for AWN about the early years of the Annecy International Animation Festival. As much fun as it is to attend the festival nowadays, I can only imagine the excitement of those glory years when one could mingle lakeside with the likes of Bobe Cannon, Chuck Jones, John and Faith Hubley, Pete Burness, Bill Littlejohn, George Dunning, Peter Foldes, Yoji Kuri, and all the other greats of animation that I so admire. Cima’s article is one of my favorite historical reads in recent months, and she offers many wonderful stories about the festival that I’d never heard, such as this one about the Hubleys:

“That was the year that John and Faith Hubley showed their Of Stars and Men. We had noticed that the French audiences were not restrained in any way from showing their regard for each film. As well as wild applause, there were equally loud boos, and worse yet, the sound of stomping feet walking out and slamming the door as loudly as possible.

“Each filmmaker, when their film was projected, was obliged to sit in the balcony box, which we all rapidly named “The Hot Box,” and take a bow — to either applause or boos, and in this case the boos were heartbreaking. John and Faith bowed and then exited as quickly as possible. I still firmly believe this is one of the most important and beautiful animated films ever made, and we tried to assuage their deep disappointment, and assure them this was a film for all time. Alas, it has been forgotten, which is a loss to all of us.”

Once again John McElwee, over at his Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, is waxing nostalgic about classic theatrical cartoons. McElwee also posts several vintage Looney Tunes cartoon posters, trade ads and publicity stills to illustrate how these shorts were once marketed.

Just spotted on ebay: a vintage publicity photo showing the producer of the Felix The Cat cartoons, Pat Sullivan, and his wife Marjorie, in Sullivan’s office with an avalanche of Felix drawings. They are apparently judging a “Draw Felix” contest, but of greater interest to me is the rare one-sheet poster (Gym Gems, 1926) tacked to the wall, the Felix doll in the corner, and the many framed, autographed photos of stars of the day. Nice find!

Good news: Popeye Vol. 3 goes on sale September 30th. Will contain all the rest of the black and white Popeye cartoons including all the wartime cartoons uncut, uncensored.

Animator and director Will Finn recently watched the entire Warner Bros. output of Chuck Jones and has composed a thoughtful blog post analyzing the work of Jones. Lots of good insights throughout, especially this spot-on comparison between the work of Jones and fellow WB director Bob Clampett:

“Unlike his arch rival Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones wants to prove to us that he is smart, tasteful and always in control of everything. Clampett of course is ultimately “in control” too, but his genius is for giving the genuine impression that all Hell is breaking loose onscreen. Much like that other Jones, namely bandleader Spike, Clampett makes us feel (frequently throughout an entire film) that every person in his troupe has gone out of their minds. This never happens in Jones’ world because he won’t allow it. Clampett’s embrace is wider: he can grasp the highbrow world of surrealism in one hand and the lowbrow crudeness of burlesque with the other–he has no boundaries. Boundaries are Chuck Jones’ stock in trade, his main theme is pitting the rational against the irrational. Even when he adopts the point of view of an irrational character, (as with the Coyote), he only does so to mock himself.”