I was prepared to see Spongebob, Snoopy and various animated stars in today’s telecast of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but was stunned to see Popeye in this commercial from General Motors. It’s a classy spot from GM, thanking us – the American people – for the loan that got them out of a financial hole and allowed them to report a record breaking $1.2 billion dollar profit this past week. I’m pleased they spent some of that money to give thanks – and to license a clip from Max Fleischer’s Axe Me Another (1934).

There are some genuinely laugh out loud moments in the Nostalgia Critic’s NSFW review of Richard William’s The Thief and the Cobbler.

(Thanks, Majic)

It’s rare when they are showing cartoons at L.A.’s CineFamily/Silent Movie Theatre without me, but that’s what’s planned on Wednesday December 1st. Animator Tom Sito will host a program of Pioneering Silent Animation at 8pm, featuring rare 35mm prints restored by the George Eastman House. Koko the Clown, Oswald the Rabbit, Mutt and Jeff and Felix The Cat will be represented in films by legendary animation directors Friz Freleng, Dave Fleischer, Paul Terry, Otto Messmer and a certain obscure fellow named Walt Disney. The evening’s program includes:

Domestic Difficulties (1916, Mutt and Jeff)
Trapped (1923, Koko the Clown)
Felix Gets Revenge (1922, Felix The Cat)
Felix Trips Through Toyland (1925, Felix The Cat)
Felix Flirts With Fate (1926, Felix The Cat)
Felix Trifles With Time (1925, Felix The Cat)
Felix Kept On Walking (1926, Felix The Cat)
Scaling The Alps (1928, Aesop’s Film Fables)
Weary Willies (1929, Oswald the Rabbit)
Sky Scrappers (1928, Oswald the Rabbit)

For more information and tickets: click here.

The legacy of animation designer/writer John Dunn (1920-1983) is secure—if unheralded—as the writer of hundreds of animated shorts for Ward Kimball, Chuck Jones, Bob McKimson, Friz Freleng, and others. In the waning days of animation’s Golden Age, he created some of the era’s last theatrical cartoon stars—Ant and the Aardvark, Roland and Rattfink, Tijuana Toads, Blue Racer, and Hoot Kloot, to name a few. When I started researching his life, I borrowed a variety of artwork from his children: storyboards, paintings, comic strips, character designs. But the most unusual possession I received was a Ziploc bag full of Security Pacific Bank calendars that Dunn maintained for the last 18 years of his life. The first ten years’ worth of calendars were not of particular note—just places for him to jot down notes about his career (weekly deadlines at the animation studio, vacation dates, meetings, and the like). With each passing year, though, the notes on his calendar grew increasingly detailed.

After Dunn semi-retired from animation in 1976, he created in the calendars an utterly unique form of self-expression. Every square inch of the 5.75″ x 6″ calendar pages, both front and back, became a miniature canvas for Dunn’s writings and drawings. He began to keep detailed accounts of what he ate, which television shows he watched, which books he read, as well as notes on his daily encounters with family members and animation colleagues. John’s son Bill doesn’t recall which sort of writing instrument his father used to write so small, but he does remember that his father retired to his study every evening to work on the calendars, using a magnifying lens to help him fit as much as he could into the daily one-inch-square space allotted him by his bank.

John Dunn with his family at Disneyland

Dunn’s devotion to the calendars manifested itself in peculiar ways: he recorded monthly rainfall tables, dates of death of actors and animation industry coworkers, and charts logging the number of times he’d eaten at various restaurants. A most unlikely item was noted on the back of one calendar: “From Oct. 3, 1977 to Jan. 22, 1980 the number of times I have walked back and forth on Hayvenhurst between Sherman Way and D.F.E. [DePatie-Freleng Enterprises] has been 845!!!” In the final year of his life, Dunn upgraded to a 7″ x 10″ engagement calendar; Security Pacific’s complimentary annuals could no longer contain his copious notes on daily life.

Dunn was both an artist and a writer, so it’s little surprise that his calendars are filed with nearly as many drawings as words. He drew mostly on the reverse sides of calendar pages, right over the text-heavy almanac data—the layer of words underneath adding a textural quality to his drawings on top. Dunn had been a fan of newspaper comics since childhood and his drawings reflect an intimate knowledge of Bigfoot cartooning conventions, recalling artists like E.C. Segar (Popeye), Sidney Smith (The Gumps), Billy DeBeck (Barney Google), and particularly Milt Gross (Count Screwloose). Disney animation director Ward Kimball once told me, “You would ask [Dunn] to do a page full of crazy-looking dogs and it was very hard to pick the craziest.” His inventiveness was unhindered even when reduced to postage-stamp proportions.

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Yet another intriguing viral going behind the scenes of Warren Spector’s forthcoming video game Epic Mickey. This one discusses the use of Horace Horsecollar, Gremlin Gus, Peg Leg Pete and others:

(Thanks, Matthew Gaastra)

I’m no fan of Scooby Doo, but if Warner Bros. ever decides to do a series or movie with character designs as cute and stylized as these, I’d quickly change my mind. Here’s the very appealing opening title sequence from the new direct-to-video Scooby Doo: Camp Scare, designed by Peter Girardi, Dan Krall, Pete Oswald and Dexter Smith and animated by the gang at Six Point Harness:

Kids, learn your math and you too can defeat the imperialist United States of America! That seems to be the message behind this 1950s-era North Korean propaganda cartoon which recently surfaced on You Tube. Say what you will about the message, the animation is pretty good.

(Thanks, Tim Dixon)

The family of Max Fleischer has set up an attractive new website devoted to the characters and legacy of Fleischer Studios — or at least the parts of it they still own the rights to. Max’s granddaughter, Ginny Mahoney, and Max’s lawyer Stanley Handeman are behind this site, which is clearly geared toward attracting potential licensees. Is there anything for the fans? Yes – a three page photo gallery of personal photos, clippings and studio memorabilia. More please!

Alex Anderson, partner of Jay Ward and instrumental in the creation of Crusader Rabbit and the characters of Frostbite Falls, has passed away.

Anderson, a native of Berkeley, California, came from a family of creative artists and in 1938 started working in animation with his uncle Paul Terry in New York at Terrytoons. During World War II, Anderson was a U.S. Navy spy, his wife said in Kansas City Star, and in 1946, he returned to Terrytoons to work full time. Two years later, he pitched the idea to create cartoon characters for television to his uncle.

Rebuffed by Terry, Anderson returned to Berkeley where he and childhood friend Jay Ward teamed up to pioneer animated series production for television, creating Crusader Rabbit for NBC in 1949.

Anderson was also part of the creation of Dudley-Do-Right and The Frostbite Falls Review, which included the characters of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In 1996, Anderson reached an out-of-court settlement with Jay Ward Productions over rights to Bullwinkle, Rocky and Dudley-Do-Right. Anderson spent most of his career in advertising, creating slogans for Berkeley Farms, Skippy Peanut Butter and Smucker’s. He died Friday at a home in Carmel, Calif. He was 90.

UPDATE: The New York Times printed this Alex Anderson obit in their October 26 print edition.

Here is the first episode of Crusader Rabbit:

(Thanks, Karl Wilcox)

John McElwee’s movie blog is always a must-read if you are a lover of classic movies. He’s done several vital posts about classic theatrical cartoons in the past, but his latest piece is one of my favorites. He’s discussing how classic shorts of the 30s and 40s were advertised to the public, posting vintage newspaper ads that promote the cartoons as enthusiastically as the main features. Disney cartoons were always a draw, and Popeye was a bona fide star. But who knew there were press materials to support Tex Avery cartoons? Part 1 of McElwee’s research is now online. Read it.

Following in the footsteps of Warner Home Video and Universal Pictures, Sony has started a new Columbia Classics archive program, making available dozens of old movies previously unavailable on DVD. For animation fans, this could be a gold mine… emphasis on the word “could”.

The studio is sitting vivid masters of all their UPA cartoons, and their libraries of Charles Mintz Scrappy, Krazy Kat and Color Rhapsodies are all restored. The 1940s Screen Gems cartoon shorts they hold include rarely seen work by Frank Tashlin, Dave Fleischer and John Hubley, with characters such as The Fox & Crow, Li’l Abner and Tito & Burrito. Columbia also has several independent works, such as Mel Brooks’ Oscar winning The Critic and anime features like Jack and The Beanstalk (1974).

The studio is taking requests on what they should offer through this program. I’d like to encourage our readers to check out the site and offer some suggestions. The Columbia cartoon library has been neglected for far too long. This might just be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for to unlock the vault.

I’m not sure even Disney knows about this… Thanks to animation historians David Gerstein and Cole Johnson, The Museum of Modern Art has just finished restoring two lost Laugh-O-Grams cartoons they had long held in their archives, previously misidentified under alternate titles. International animation archivist Serge Bromberg (Lobster Films) is going to host a showing of the new prints on Halloween, Sunday October 31st at 2pm.

Cole Johnson located Goldie Locks and The Three Bears at MoMA under a 1929 sound reissue title “The Peroxide Kid” and Gerstein recently identified the lost Jack The Giant Killer, which the Museum had under the name “The K-O Kid”.

In addition to the two new discoveries, newly preserved and restored prints of Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots and The Four Musicians Of Bremen will be screened at MoMA along with Disney’s original 1921 Laugh-O-Gram sample reel and several Ub Iwerks cartoons – Flip the Frog in Techno-Cracked (1933) and the ComicColor Don Quixote (1934).

Bromberg is coming in from Europe for MoMA’s annual To Save and Project festival to introduce the Laugh-O-Grams screening and provide piano accompaniment. The program will repeat only one more time, later that week, on November 4 at 4:30pm.

The two Laugh-O-Grams not being screened, Cinderella and Jack and The Beanstalk, are not held by MoMA. Beanstalk was also long considered lost, but has also been discovered by Gerstein in a private collection. This means that all seven 1922 Disney Laugh-O-Grams fairy tales – Holy Grails to Disney historians – are now known to exist.

For more background information on this incredible find, read David Gerstein’s blog for the full story.