We’ve posted about Mish Mish cartoons before - but here’s a new one you gotta see. The character was the star of a popular Egyptian cartoon series of the 1930s by the Frenkel Bros. - who apparently were so taken with American cartoons they literally traced animation, character designs and ideas directly from them. This one, National Defense, is a World War II epic presented in two parts. In the musical first half, the animators borrow from Bosko and Buddy, mix belly dancers and dancing hooka’s, and possibly the worst caricatures of Laurel and Hardy, Eddie Cantor and Charlie Chaplin you’ll ever see. The second half takes place on the battlefield and it’s probably the funkiest animated propaganda ever made. The crude animation only adds to the charm. No matter what you think of Mish Mish, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore!

(Thanks, Milton Knight)

I got into a discussion with a friend last week about the horrible theatrical cartoons of the 1960s. I call them “drive-in cartoons” because I see no use for them except to be filler at drive-in theaters, allowing time for kids to get concessions or for teenagers to make-out before the main feature. Almost all 1960s Walter Lantz cartoons, Terrytoons and later Warner Bros. cartoons (the Larriva Road Runner and Daffy-Speedy crap) fall into this definition. Most would include the Paramount cartoons into this club. I don’t, but here’s one that’s pretty bad - and a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Two By Two has the distinction of being the cartoon that got Howard Post fired from his position as head of the Paramount Cartoon Studio. It wasn’t the abysmal quality of the film, the awful character designs or the lame jokes. It was the fact that he was spoofing a story from the bible; it offended someone (A Paramount exec? An exhibitor?) and got him canned. Personally, I’m offended that the highly creative Post - whom I am a huge fan of - conceived such a poor rip-off of Daffy Duck (aka “Quacky Whack”). At one point, Quacky impersonates God… perhaps this what ticked off the Paramount brass? Shamus Culhane (Post’s successor) says in his book that Paramount was pressuring him to create a “Bugs Bunny” type cartoon. Perhaps Post was simply trying to give his bosses what they wanted… unfortunately, he failed quite miserably. Here… you be the judge:

Cartoon Network takes a lot of heat around here, but when they do something right we’ll report it and celebrate it. Starting today, classic Warner Bros. cartoons return to the channel in a six-hour marathon (1pm-7pm EST), and the network has scheduled a regular daily hour of Looney Tunes at 11am Eastern (8am Pacific) each weekday. You can check the schedule here. Let’s support this move. Watch some Looney Tunes today, and tell your friends. Let’s show them that cartoons belong on a Cartoon Network.

Film editor Stan Warnow has made a documentary about his father, the musician/composer/inventor Raymond Scott. Deconstructing Dad: the Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott is now playing film festivals around the world. The six minute preview above explains it all, with commentary from musicians Mark Mothersbaugh, John Williams, historians Irwin Chusid, Will Friedwald, producer Hal Willner and many more. I can’t wait to see the whole thing.

(Thanks, Craig Clark)

Whenever I appear on Shokus Internet Radio, I get to plow through Stu Shostack’s incredible library of TV Guide back issues - and I always seem to find something of interest for Cartoon Brew. This time I grabbed the July 1st 1961 issue, with the Flintstones cover (click thumbnail at left to see at full size), which contains a good article on the then-current trend towards prime time animation. It’s a pretty nice piece. The writer includes an intriguing list of forthcoming shows that were apparently never made: Sir Loin and the Dragon, Waco Wolf, Muddled Masterpieces and The Late Late War.

(Click thumbnails below to read pages at full size)

As a historian, I get a real kick whenever I discover that somebody I had no idea was still alive is, in fact, alive and well. Such is the case with this article in the Monterey County Herald which reveals that Maxine Patin is still around at 95, and is even having a show of her paintings this weekend. She was married to Ray Patin, who was an animator before launching Ray Patin Productions, one of the most successful TV commercial studios in LA during the 1950s. (A lot of the studio’s art can be found online including here and here.) It doesn’t appear that Maxine ever worked in animation, but it’s clear that she’s lived quite a full life herself. I particularly liked this quote from her daughter: “She has a beauty, intelligence and a nobility that she’s completely unaware of — and that, in itself, is part of her beauty. She doesn’t know how not to be kind. She doesn’t know how to put on airs because she came from a generation of people who never learned how to manipulate. What you see is what you get.”

The 1971 X-rated feature The Telephone Book screens Thursday evening, November 5, at the Egyptian Theatre. The film, described as a “biting satire on sexual morality about a girl who falls in love with the world’s greatest obscene phone caller,” probably isn’t for everybody. But it has developed a cult reputation over the years and was considered a source of inspiration for Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris while Steve Martin labeled it one of his favorite films of the Seventies.

The reason it’s on the Brew is because the climax of the film is an outlandish and humorously erotic piece of animation directed by my pal, animation legend Len Glasser. Len has an illustrious history in the field. A student of Franz Kline and S. Neil Fujita, he worked at Terrytoons on Tom Terrific and designed films and commercials for Ernie Pintoff before starting his own commercial studio Stars and Stripes Productions Forever, which produced some of the craziest and most creative TV spots of the 1960s. Here’s one of his well-known spots:

The Egyptian screening will be followed by a Q&A with Len, along with the film’s director/writer Nelson Lyon and producer Merv Bloch. The film was also recently released on dvd in Europe. Ordering details can be found on the film’s official website.

Animation historian and cartoon archeologist Steve Stanchfield is back with another double header of rare 1930s cartoons from the long-forgotten Fleischer-rival, Van Beuren Studios. His latest Thunderbean DVDs are The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry and Aesop’s Fables Vol. 2 - and again, I recommend these highly to anyone - especially those who love 1930s-style rubber-hose animation.

The Tom & Jerry set (with gorgeous Milton Knight cover art) is particularly amazing. These hilarious cartoons are obscure to begin with, so a real treat is the fabulous film prints Stanchfield digs up and lovingly restores. Many of the cartoons look really great, especially A Swiss Trick (1931) from a 35mm nitrate sepia-tinted, spliceless print, with its original titles intact. This is as close as we’ll ever get to experiencing one of these cartoons the way audiences saw them in the early 30s. It really makes a difference.

Also on the T&J set, galleries of original trade ads, posters, home movie boxes, picture books, and four additional cartoons starring Tom & Jerry precursors, Waffles and Don. Stanchfield goes an extra five miles here, with the inclusion of a comparison reel of Tom & Jerry animation against a rare Egyptian knock-off by the Frenkel Brothers. Priceless stuff.

For more information on Thunderbean’s complete line of animation rarities, click here.