John McElwee waxes nostalgic about collecting 8mm home movies and Flip The Frog on his Greenbriar Picture Shows blog. As usual on his site, McElwee’s illustrated the piece with rare trade advertisements from the 1930s.

Also, this Flip doll has to be one of the ugliest pieces of cartoon merchandising I’ve ever seen. That said, I want one.

Auctioneers Profiles In History are currently having an incredible entertainment memorabilia sale which is including a Lot of 100 puppets and pieces-of-puppets from the George Pal’s Jasper Puppetoons. The bids start at $8000. Here’s the link. There are also separate lots for puppets from individual non-Jasper films such as The Gay Knighties, Rhythm In The Ranks, Two-Gun Rusty, John Henry, Tubby The Tuba and on and on! This lot was part of the estate of William Nassour who, with his brother, produced several Hollywood movies and experimented in stop motion animation. Apparently they took over the Puppetoon shop when Pal moved on into feature production - and held onto these puppets until now!

If those prices are too steep, you can own one of Pal’s most iconic movie models for a more modest $35. Pegasus Hobbies, under license from Paramount Pictures, is exclusively selling reproductions of the Martian War Machines from War Of The Worlds. They sell them as either plastic model kits or pre-built and plated. I actually have one of the pre-built ones and it’s quite beautiful.

Mark Evanier also points out that the Hollywood auction above is also selling an astonishing collection of Walker Edminston’s Time For Beany Beany & Cecil puppets and memorabilia. Lot’s of jaw-dropping Clampett puppets and ephemera here.

Her birthday was yesterday, Friday September 18th. Mark Evanier sent us this great photo of June and Walter Lantz (click thumbnail at left to see it at full size) to mark the occasion. June’s new autobigraphy can be ordered at her website, www.juneforay.com - and I highly recommend it. She’s a living legend - and been much more than animation’s greatest voice actress: she’s been a tireless worker in bringing respect and recognition to the animation field. We love you, June! I know she’s reading this website, so feel free to send her a greeting in the comments below.

One of the rarest children’s books illustrated by an animation artist is Philippe Halsman’s Piccoli (1953), with illustrations by Paul Julian. It’s rare no longer as Michael Sporn has scanned in John Canemaker’s copy of the book, and has made available all of Julian’s stunning artwork from the book. The painting of the boy hiding under the sheets reminds me of a similar scene in UPA’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which shouldn’t be surprising because Julian was creating his exquisite paintings for that film right around the time he illustrated this book. For more Julian animation art, check out these Warner Bros. backgrounds; Pete Alvarado told me that Julian set the WB house style (and the standard) that all the other painters followed at WB in the 1940s.

Once again, Martha Sigall explains it all:

For more Martha, buy her book Living Life Inside the Lines.

Is anybody following the official Chuck Jones blog? Because fans of Chuck should be! Chuck’s daughter, Linda, has been posting a fascinating series of letters that he wrote to her when she went off to boarding school in 1952. Even though a lot of the details are mundane, the value of sharing these letters is immense. They offer a totally new personal perspective on how Jones handled being a father at a time when he was also at the top of his game. There are also some great animation-related bits sprinkled throughout the letters, like his thoughts about working on the Roadrunner/Coyote shorts:

Been slamming through another Coyote and Roadrunner, as I may have mentioned. These are sort of money-in-the-bank type pictures. We don’t have to worry about establishing a premise or continuity or character development much or trick backgrounds. Everything’s pretty open. Just sit down and start drawing and when all the gags are roughed out, arrange them according to pace, so’s the picture will build in tempo, find myself a strong gag to end on and I’m in business. Timing is a snap because no dialogue and there’s no worry about making it too long, because I can time the gags as I go along and use just as many as I need. All in all, life could be very simple and maybe a little bit dull if all I had to do was direct coyote and r.r.s.

Read Linda’s intro to the series and then check out all of the letters. Start at the back with the first post if you want to keep proper chronology.

I don’t have the mp3’s of these recordings, but the sleeves are too cool not to share. Click thumbnails below to see larger images.

Brew reader Hiland Hall sent in the front and back sleeve of a rare Mel Blanc promotional recording (below left and center) with nifty unidentified artwork. It’s hard to believe Blanc had to pitch himself like this - he must have been the world’s most famous voice actor at the time. UPDATE: Steve Worth at the Asifa-Hollywood Animation Archive posted the audio from this record here.

Below right is the cover of some bizarre kiddie record I got off one of my daily visits to the LP Cover Lover blog. Check that out regularly for the coolest in oddball albums.

I will be off the internet for most of the next four days, enjoying my holiday weekend at Cinecon (the classic movie festival at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard). Cinecon specializes in screening rare films and recent studio restorations not available on DVD, TCM or anywhere else.

King Kelly of the USA (Monogram, 1934) is the kind of offbeat B-movie Cinecon would show - except that this film can be found easily on DVD, as it is one of hundreds of Hollywood orphan films that have fallen into the public domain. It’s not a particularly good picture (though co-stars Edgar Kennedy and Franklin Pangborn have some funny scenes, and they’re always worth watching), however it has this curious animation sequence about 18 minutes in.

Here, Broadway singer Guy Robertson (starring in his only film) tries wooing co-star Irene Ware in song, with a little help from his table cloth drawings. The animation looks familiar, but I can’t quite place who did it. Bizarre in a fun way - check out the mouth action - very much like something a New York studio would do. It certainly isn’t from Terrytoons or Van Bueren. Anyone want to take a guess who’s behind this… Ted Eshbaugh? Les Elton?