One of my favorite actors and character animation voices, Arnold Stang, has passed away at age 91. In animation, Stang will live forever as the voice of Hanna-Barbera’s Top Cat (1961). Stang was also unforgettable as wise-guy Herman Mouse (aka “Uncle Hoiman”) in the Paramount (Harvey) Herman and Katnip cartoons — and Blackie Sheep in the early Noveltoons. He also voiced Snurtle the Turtle in Pinocchio In the Outer Space (1965), Churchy LeFemme in I Go Pogo (1980), Quesy the Parrot in Richard Williams’ Raggedy Ann and Andy (1977) and voiced characters on Garfield, Courage the Cowardly Dog, among others.

In live action, he appeared in so many of my favorite movies (such as It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World) and guilty pleasures (Skidoo, Hercules in New York). His sequence with Jonathan Winters in Mad Mad World is one of the funniest and most memorable bits in that film. The publicity photo above promotes the American-International dub of Alakazam The Great (1961), in which Stang (center) participated with Winters (left) (and I think that’s Jackie Joseph at right) on the English track.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Stang. Here’s the NY Times obit.

I just got an advance copy of the Ralph Bakshi Mighty Mouse The New Adventures complete series DVD — and it turned out a lot better than I could have hoped. Most of us have been clinging to bootleg videos or our own deteriorating taped-off-the-air VHS copies for 20 years; now we have gorgeous restorations to enjoy for all time. Rewatching these has been an incredible pleasure; they hold up quite well. Sure, the animation is a little funky compared the shows that have come after, but this series has earned its place as an “industry game-changer”.

I was proud to act as a consultant on this DVD project from its inception. The only credit I receive here is as “Animation Consultant” in tiny letters in the credit roll on the bonus documentary (which is better than my non-credit on the two Woody Woodpecker DVD volumes from Universal). I might as well point out a 21 year old in-joke - note the headline on the newspaper (above left - click thumbnails above to enlarge) from the second season cartoon, Still Oily After All These Years: “Beck-Bakshi Detente!”.

Below are a few menus and the back cover. The DVD goes on sale January 5th, 2010. Good sales could lead to the restoration and release of more classic cartoons from the Viacom vaults (the vintage Terrytoons of Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, the Fleischer Betty Boops, Famous Little Lulu’s and George Pal Puppetoons). I can’t promise anything, but every purchase helps the cause. I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word.

A few years ago I was discussing childhood fears with a couple friends. One of the fears, which I did not share, was that of animated corporate logos - specifically, the five-second company IDs tagged at the end of old TV shows. As time went on, I’d heard of others who shared this “logo-phobia”. In fact, there are now several websites and You Tube videos devoted to this particular fear.

Now a documentary filmmaker is creating a film about the scariest corporate symbol in history: The 1964 Screen Gems logo, aka The S From Hell. “Built around interviews with survivors still traumatized from viewing the logo after shows like Bewitched or The Monkees, the film brings their stories to life with animation, found footage, and reenactments.” Strange but true - here’s the trailer:

(Thanks, Keri Maijala)

December 8th is the 105th birthday of Elzie Segar, creator of the Thimble Theatre comic strip and Popeye the Sailor. Google is commemorating the day with this graphic on its main page.

UPDATE: The Popeye drawing was done by Stephen DeStefano.

(Thanks Joseph Game and Bill Andres)

In 1990, Chuck Jones sat down with animation director Jeff DeGrandis to discuss the art of drawing and character development. On February 1, 2010, the non-profit Chuck Jones Center for Creativity will release the chat onto dvd as the Chuck Jones Master Series. The project, designed to be a fundraiser for the organization, will be available on two separate 45-minute dvds. The first dvd can be pre-ordered for a minimum donation of $19.95. For more details, visit the official Chuck Jones blog and to order the dvd, contact DVD(at)ChuckJonesCenter(dot)org.

Here’s a preview:

I’d never seen this before. Oh I’d seen the cartoon, but not this title card.

Mike Kazaleh found a recent upload of a rare 2-color MGM Bosko cartoon on You Tube. It apparently comes from a newly restored print and contains a few flash frames of a previously unseen Bosko title card (above) at the end. This frame isn’t on the TV print that was in circulation in the 1960s. In fact, the old TV print has these frames curiously blacked out. The cartoon, Bosko’s Parlor Pranks from 1934, is one of the first of Hugh Harman and Rudloph Ising’s Happy Harmonies series. It’s also a “cheater” using ample stock shots and animation (now in color) from previous black & white Bosko Looney Tunes cartoons. Enjoy it now before it’s removed:

Animator and now author Darrell Van Citters will appear at events in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland to celebrate and sign his book Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol:The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special. Van Citters has scheduled book signing events to be held at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco next Tuesday December 8th and The Art Institute of Portland in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday December 9th.

In Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque will present a screening of the Magoo special at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Charles Solomon. Marie Matthews (voice of Young Scrooge), Jane Kean (voice of Belle) and layout artist Bob Singer will join Van Citters on the panel. The Aero Theatre event will begin at 4pm on Saturday December 19th.

Gene Deitch has written this plea before, but he’s not ready to give up hope. The first cartoon he ever directed - for UPA no less - is apparently a lost film. Writes Gene:

“The short animated film that I consider my seminal work appears to be lost and gone forever. It is not listed on any roster of animated films. Technically, it does not exist. The only evidence that it ever did, beside my word and a very few living witnesses, is a magazine article in the also vanished Colliers magazine, with one barely representative illustration (above, click to see it larger).”

The name of this hopelessly obscure little film is also weirdly surrealistic: HOWDY DOODY AND HIS MAGIC HAT. Surrealistic because the film had nothing to do –really – with the grotesque television puppet Howdy Doody. So what is the origin of this artistic tragedy? Here’s the story: The Howdy Doody production organization, Kagran Corp, paid us at UPA-New York, in 1952, to make the film, hoping to establish their string puppet star into a movie star. We disappointed them. They felt we screwed them, and they got the ultimate revenge: They destroyed the negative. They destroyed my seminal work of animation art! I ultimately got that information from a most reliable source: my best friend, and the one-time voice of Howdy Doody and his entire gang, Allen Swift. Allen told me that Bob Smith, the creator of Howdy Doody, hated my film so vehemently that he ordered it wiped it off the face of the earth!

What had we done, and why? We, the then masters of modern animation – the purveyors of progressive design, got it into our eggy heads to influence Kagran to transform Howdy Doody with elegant graphics; to give children something better than the schlocky look of their immensely popular TV show. To this day I don’t know what made us think we could get away with it. We were delighted to take Kagran’s money, and the opportunity it gave us to show our stuff.

When I claim my so-called HOWDY DOODY film is a work of art, I don’t mean that it was all my art. Cliff Roberts was the graphic designer, and Duane Crowther the animator, and I can’t even remember the name of the great young avant garde composer. We were all proud of our film, feeling it was a landmark, that would not only rejuvinate the ugly H.D. but would become a classic film for us.

My personal contribution was partly the storywritten in collaboration with my long-time friend, William Bernal, ( a cowboy rough-rider variation on the magic talisman that endows victory, but that is lost and forces the hero to win without it), plus my visual conception, layout and direction. Coping with the low budget, I decided to do it as paper cut-out animation with special camera effects of my own invention, which became the basis of my filming technique throughout my career and to this day. That’s why the ‘HOWDY DOODY AND HIS MAGIC HAT film is still so important to me. Others have since done these same multiple exposure depth effects, overlapping dissolves and backlit glows since those early days before computers existed, but without a copy of this simple little 1952 bag of tricks filmette, how can I prove I did it first?

When I left UPA New York to pursue other glories, I did manage to get a 16mm print, and I eventually brought that print with me on my first trip to Prague, 50 years ago in 1959 – to impress the communist-repressed locals my skills. It worked, and I won my incredible wife in the process. But in that first trip, nothing like that was assured. I had only a few days to stay here, and according to US Customs regulations at the time, I could not carry films to America in my luggage, so the Czechoslovak Air Cargo outfit shipped my film back to Bill Snyder’s office. It arrived. It was not confiscated by the Czechs, yet when I returned, Snyder could not find it. I had my mind set on more urgent matters, and assumed it would turn up. It never did.

Snyder and his assistant repeatedly told me the print could not be found. I had returned to Prague and had no chance to get to New York during that time - the early 1960s. When I did get there, I could not find it in the Rembrandt Film’s store room. Later, after Snyder died and his company was taken over by his son Adam, our close friend, neither he could find it.

So this possibly lone 16mm film print slipped from my grasp. Many colleagues tried to locate a print, but to this day, nearly 50 years later, it appears to be hopeless. So my first UPA film, “Directed by Gene Deitch,” seems to be lost forever.

Only the Kagran Corporation, now also defunct, could have derived satisfaction, that this brazen little animated movie, which dared to meddle with the design and name of their beloved character, has been erased from history! - Gene Deitch

If one 16mm print existed, surely others were struck from the negative. And what of the negative, or any original art? If anyone has any clues as to the existence of anything related to the film (not the Little Golden Book), please contact us.