Confidence: The Cartoon That Helped America Get Through the Great Depression (1933)

in Animation, History, Music | June 20th, 2014

No more bum­min’, let’s all get to work…

Actu­al­ly, hold up a sec. We’ll all be more hap­py and pro­duc­tive if we take a moment to start our work day with Con­fi­dence, a pep­py musi­cal ani­ma­tion from 1933, star­ring new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and Mick­ey Mouse pre­cur­sor, Oswald the Lucky Rab­bit. 

Few Amer­i­cans—today we’d refer to them as the 1%—could escape the pri­va­tion of the Great Depres­sion. The movies were one indus­try that con­tin­ued to thrive through this dark peri­od, pre­cise­ly because they offered a few hours of respite. No one went to the pic­tures to see a reflec­tion of their own lives. Gor­geous gowns, glam­orous Man­hat­tan apart­ments and roman­tic trou­ble cer­tain to be resolved in hap­py endings…remember Mia Far­row’s belea­guered wait­ress bask­ing in the Pur­ple Rose of Cairo’s reas­sur­ing glow?

Giv­en the pub­lic’s pref­er­ence for escapist fare, direc­tor Bill Nolan, the Father of Rub­ber Hose Ani­ma­tion, could have played it safe by gloss­ing over the back­sto­ry that leads Oswald to seek out advice from the Com­man­der in Chief. Instead, Nolan deliv­ered his joy­ful car­toon ani­mals into night­mare ter­ri­to­ry, the Depres­sion per­son­i­fied as a cowled Death fig­ure lay­ing waste to the land. It’s weird­ly upset­ting to see those hyper-cheer­ful vin­tage barn­yard ani­mals (and a rogue mon­key) under­go this graph­ic ener­va­tion.

Oh, for some oral history—I’d love to know how mati­nee crowds react­ed as Oswald raced scream­ing before a spin­ning ver­ti­go back­ground, seek­ing a rem­e­dy for a host of non-car­toon prob­lems. Irony is a lux­u­ry they did­n’t have.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the can-do spir­it so cen­tral to FDR’s New Deal quick­ly turned Oswald’s frown upside down. As pres­i­den­tial cam­paign promis­es go, this one’s unique­ly tai­lored to the demands of musi­cal com­e­dy. Wit­ness Annie, in which the 32nd pres­i­dent was again called upon to Rex Har­ri­son his way into audi­ence hearts, this time from the wheel­chair the cre­ators of Con­fi­dence did­n’t dare show, some forty years ear­li­er.

The divi­sion between enter­tain­ment and nation-lead­ing is pret­ty per­me­able these days, too.

Accord­ing­ly, what real­ly sets this car­toon apart for me is the use of a Pres­i­den­tial­ly-sanc­tioned giant syringe as a tool to get Depres­sion-era Amer­i­ca back on its feet. A fig­u­ra­tive injec­tion of con­fi­dence is all well and good, but noth­ing gets the barn­yard back on its singing, danc­ing feet like a lib­er­al dose, deliv­ered in the most lit­er­al way.

Via Car­toon Research

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

Found: Lost Great Depres­sion Pho­tos Cap­tur­ing Hard Times on Farms, and in Town

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can’t get enough of that rub­ber style. Fol­low her@AyunHalliday

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How to Draw Bugs Bunny: A Primer by Legendary Animator Chuck Jones

in Animation | June 20th, 2014

Bugs Bun­ny, that car­rot-chomp­ing, cross-dress­ing ras­cal, might have been cre­at­ed by Tex Avery in the 1940 car­toon A Wild Hare, but he real­ly came into his own under the direc­tion of Chuck Jones. In car­toons like What’s Opera, Doc and Rab­bit Sea­son, Jones refined Bugs’ char­ac­ter, turn­ing him into some­one who was wit­ty, resource­ful and, most of all, cool. Whether or not he was going up against Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam or Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian, Bugs always seemed to have the upper hand. Jones once com­pared Bugs with his vain, self-aggran­diz­ing rival Daffy Duck by say­ing, “Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.”

In the video above, Jones shows you how to draw Bugs, and, of course, he makes it look like a cinch. “If you were to draw Bugs,” says Jones in his clipped, pre­cise dic­tion, “the best way to do it is learn how to draw a car­rot and then you can hook a rab­bit on to it.” Not the most help­ful advice for aspir­ing ani­ma­tors. Yet watch­ing Jones sketch out the world’s most famous rab­bit in a mere cou­ple of min­utes is a joy to see.

The trick to draw­ing Bugs, appar­ent­ly, is the nose.  After rough­ing out a cir­cle for the head and a reni­form oval for the body, Jones draws a tiny tri­an­gle for the nose. From there, he sketch­es out two lines, radi­at­ing out­ward from the nose, which deter­mines the loca­tion of Bugs’ ears and eyes. As Jones fills in the rest of the face, he reveals that the inspi­ra­tion of Bugs’ broad, toothy grin was Nor­we­gian fig­ure skater turned 1930s Hol­ly­wood star Sonia Henie. Not, per­haps, the first per­son to come to mind.

To see the Bugs in action, be sure to watch one of Jones’s great­est car­toons, Hare-Way to the Stars. It fea­tures Bugs squar­ing off against Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian in his quest to blow up the Earth with his Illudi­um Q‑36 Explo­sive Space Mod­u­la­tor. More great ani­ma­tions can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Per­forms the Voic­es of Bugs Bun­ny and Oth­er Car­toon Leg­ends

The Strange Day When Bugs Bun­ny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Stephen Hawking Shows His Funny Side in John Oliver’s Series “Great Minds: People Who Think Good”

in Comedy, Physics | June 19th, 2014

John Oliv­er kicked off his new series “Great Minds: Peo­ple Who Think Good” with an extend­ed inter­view with Stephen Hawk­ing. For a moment there, it all feels a bit like a clas­sic Ali G inter­view. (Remem­ber Sacha Baron Cohen’s price­less inter­view with Noam “Nor­man” Chom­sky?) But, soon enough, you real­ize that Hawk­ing is in on the joke. And he deliv­ers some good lines, with the hint of a smile.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

Stephen Hawk­ing: Aban­don Earth Or Face Extinc­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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X Minus One: Hear Classic Sci-Fi Radio Stories from Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury & Dick

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

xminusone

Though I sel­dom long for my native cul­ture when abroad, when the need for a hit of Amer­i­cana does arise (and I say this cur­rent­ly writ­ing from Seoul, South Korea), I fill my iPod with old time radio. Many shows from Amer­i­ca’s “Gold­en Age” of wire­less broad­cast­ing can fill this need, but one could do much worse than Dimen­sion X, the ear­ly-1950s sci­ence-fic­tion pro­gram we fea­tured ear­li­er this month, or its late-1950s suc­ces­sor X Minus One, whose episodes you can also find at the Inter­net Archive. Both show­case Amer­i­can cul­ture at its mid-20th-cen­tu­ry finest: for­ward-look­ing, tem­pera­men­tal­ly bold, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly adept, and sat­u­rat­ed with earnest­ness but for the occa­sion­al sur­pris­ing­ly know­ing irony or bleak edge of dark­ness. That last comes cour­tesy of these shows’ writ­ing tal­ent, a group which includes such canon­i­cal names as Philip K. Dick, Ray Brad­bury, Isaac Asi­mov, and Robert Hein­lein.

X Minus One’s run, which last­ed from April 1955 to Jan­u­ary 1958, includ­ed a heap­ing help­ing of the evi­dent­ly high­ly radio-adapt­able Ray Brad­bury: his sto­ries “And The Moon Be Still As Bright,” “Mars is Heav­en,” “The Veldt,” “Dwellers in Silence,” “Zero Hour,” “To the Future,” and “Mar­i­onettes, Inc.,” all appeared as episodes. From Robert A. Hein­lein’s hard­er-bit­ten body of work the show pro­duced “Uni­verse,” “Requiem,” and “The Roads Must Roll.” Isaac Asi­mov, one of the most sci­en­tif­ic of that era’s sci­ence-fic­tion writ­ers, wrote the source mate­r­i­al for “Night­fall,” “C‑Chute,” and “Host­ess.” The pen of Philip K. Dick, sure­ly the most pure­ly imag­i­na­tive of the bunch, for its part pro­duced “The Defend­ers” and “Colony.” Amer­i­ca let fly all sorts of visions of the future back then, from the opti­mistic to the pes­simistic, the utopi­an to the dystopi­an, the pro­gres­sive to the regres­sive. The afore­men­tioned writ­ers did it best by mix­ing all those sen­si­bil­i­ties into each of their visions, which you can hear, along with those of many oth­ers, in X Minus One’s robust archive. You can stream sev­er­al of the episodes below.

“The Defend­ers” (Philip K. Dick)

“Night­fall” (Isaac Asi­mov)

“Zero Hour” (Ray Brad­bury)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio: The War of the Worlds That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series Fea­tures 24 Free Plays About Great Sci­en­tists and Sci­en­tif­ic Endeav­ors

Isaac Asimov’s Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sic, The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Dra­ma­tized for Radio (1973)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Marcel Proust Fills Out a Questionnaire in 1890: The Manuscript of the ‘Proust Questionnaire’

in Literature | June 19th, 2014

proust-2

Mar­cel Proust, the author of the great mod­ernist work À la recherche du temps per­du (Remem­brance of Things Past), was the very def­i­n­i­tion of the sen­si­tive artist. Per­pet­u­al­ly bat­tling bouts of depres­sion and ill health, Proust lived at home with his par­ents until their deaths. Though he became a recluse lat­er in life, sleep­ing by day and writ­ing fever­ish­ly at night, he poured his soul into his epic nov­el, detail­ing his strug­gles in a man­ner that has con­nect­ed deeply with gen­er­a­tions of read­ers. Proust has become over the years an icon of artis­tic sin­cer­i­ty.

In the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the con­fes­sion book was all the rage in Eng­land. It asked read­ers to answer a series of per­son­al ques­tions designed to reveal their inner char­ac­ters. In 1890, Proust, still a teenag­er, took this ques­tion­naire, answer­ing the ques­tions with frank sin­cer­i­ty. The orig­i­nal man­u­script was uncov­ered in 1924, two years after Proust’s death, and in 2003, it was auc­tioned off for rough­ly $130,000. You can see the orig­i­nal 1890 man­u­script above and, if your French isn’t up to snuff, we have a trans­la­tion below.

Many decades lat­er, French TV host Bernard Piv­ot start­ed using this exact type of ques­tion­naire to inter­view thinkers, lead­ers and celebri­ties. It proved to be a great device for get­ting a glimpse into the inner work­ings of a star’s mind. James Lip­ton adapt­ed the ques­tion­naire for his own show, Inside the Actors Stu­dio (watch above), while mis­at­tribut­ing its ori­gins to Proust. Nonethe­less, the name ‘The Proust Ques­tion­naire” stuck. The quiz is also a reg­u­lar fea­ture in the mag­a­zine Van­i­ty Fair. You can read the respons­es from the likes of Rachel Mad­dow, Har­ri­son Ford and Louis CK, whose answers read like an exten­sion of his stand up rou­tine. And if you’re eager to take the test your­self, you can do so here.

The prin­ci­pal aspect of my per­son­al­i­ty:
The need to be loved; more pre­cise­ly, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired.

The qual­i­ty that I desire in a man:
Man­ly virtues, and frank­ness in friend­ship.

The qual­i­ty that I desire in a woman:
Fem­i­nine charms.

Your chief char­ac­ter­is­tic:
[Left Blank]

What I appre­ci­ate most about my friends:
To have ten­der­ness for me, if their per­son­age is exquis­ite enough to ren­der quite high the price of their ten­der­ness.

My main fault:
Not know­ing, not being able to “want”.

My favorite occu­pa­tion:
Lov­ing.

My dream of hap­pi­ness:
I am afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroy­ing it by speak­ing it.

What would be my great­est mis­for­tune?
Not to have known my moth­er or my grand­moth­er.

What I should like to be:
Myself, as the peo­ple whom I admire would like me to be.

The coun­try where I should like to live:
A coun­try where cer­tain things that I should like would come true as though by mag­ic, and where ten­der­ness would always be rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed.

My favorite col­or:
The beau­ty is not in the col­ors, but in their har­mo­ny.

My favorite bird:
The swal­low.

My favorite prose authors:
Cur­rent­ly, Ana­tole France and Pierre Loti.

My favorite poets:
Baude­laire and Alfred de Vigny.

My heroes in fic­tion:
Ham­let.

My favorite hero­ines in fic­tion.
Bérénice.

My favorite com­posers:
Beethoven, Wag­n­er, Schu­mann.

My favorite painters:
Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Rem­brandt.

My heroes in real life:
Mr. Dar­lu, Mr. Boutroux.

My hero­ines in his­to­ry:
Cleopa­tra.

My favorite names:
I only have one at a time.

What I hate most of all:
What is bad about me.

His­tor­i­cal fig­ures that I despise the most:
I am not edu­cat­ed enough.

The mil­i­tary event that I admire most:
My mil­i­tary ser­vice!

The gift of nature that I would like to have:
Will-pow­er, and seduc­tive­ness.

How I want to die:
Improved—and loved.

My present state of mind:
Bore­dom from hav­ing thought about myself to answer all these ques­tions.

Faults for which I have the most indul­gence:
Those that I under­stand.

My mot­to:
I should be too afraid that it bring me mis­for­tune.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er Dis­cuss­es His Love for Read­ing Proust, and Why “Lit­er­a­ture is Cru­cial to Any Democ­ra­cy”

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Lis­ten­ing to Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Free eBooks: Read All of Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past on the Cen­ten­ni­al of Swann’s Way

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin Writes a Fan Letter to Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (1963)

in Letters, Sci Fi | June 19th, 2014

martin-LETTER

The let­ter above goes to show two things. George Ray­mond Richard Mar­tin, oth­er­wise known as George R.R. Mar­tin, or sim­ply as GRRM, had fan­ta­sy and writ­ing in his blood from a young age. Decades before he wrote his fan­ta­sy nov­el series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapt­ed into Game of Thrones, a 15-year-old George R. Mar­tin sent a fan let­ter to Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by, the leg­endary cre­ators of Spi­der-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X‑Men and the Fan­tas­tic Four (called “F.F.” in the let­ter). When you read the note, you can imme­di­ate­ly tell that young Mar­tin was steeped in sci-fi and fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture. He could also string togeth­er some fair­ly com­plex sen­tences dur­ing his teenage years — sen­tences that many adults would strug­gle to write. But here’s the cool part for me. Wun­derkind Mar­tin lived in good old Bay­onne, NJ, the town where yours tru­ly has deep fam­i­ly roots. You can find the cov­er of the much-praised F.F. #17 below.

FF017cover

via Huff­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Lars von Trier’s Ani­mat­ed Movie Made When He Was 11 Years Old

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

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Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960)

in Literature | June 18th, 2014

flann rand2

In a let­ter dat­ed May 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the author best known for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read the sto­ry here) penned a let­ter to her friend, the play­wright Mary­at Lee. It begins rather abrupt­ly, like­ly because it’s respond­ing to some­thing Mary­at said in a pre­vi­ous let­ter:

I hope you don’t have friends who rec­om­mend Ayn Rand to you. The fic­tion of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fic­tion. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the sub­way and threw it in the near­est garbage pail. She makes Mick­ey Spillane look like Dos­to­evsky.

The let­ter, which you can read online or find in the book The Habit of Being, then turns to oth­er mat­ters.

O’Con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of Ayn Rand’s books is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But here’s one fac­toid worth know­ing. Mick­ey Spillane (ref­er­enced in O’Con­nor’s let­ter) was a huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer, who sold some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his life­time. Accord­ing to his Wash­ing­ton Post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, often fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe Mike Ham­mer and a cast of evil­do­ers.” Crit­ics, appalled by the sex and vio­lence in his books, dis­missed his writ­ing. But Ayn Rand defend­ed him. In pub­lic, she said that Spillane was under­rat­ed. In her book The Roman­tic Man­i­festo, Rand put Spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­ny when she wrote: “[Vic­tor] Hugo gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cathedral–Dostoevsky gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors, but with a pow­er­ful guide–Spillane gives me the feel­ing of lis­ten­ing to a mil­i­tary band in a pub­lic park–Tolstoy gives me the feel­ing of an unsan­i­tary back­yard which I do not care to enter.” All of which goes to show that Ayn Rand’s lit­er­ary taste was no bet­ter than her lit­er­a­ture.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Ayn Rand Adamant­ly Defends Her Athe­ism on The Phil Don­ahue Show (Cir­ca 1979)

The Out­spo­ken Ayn Rand Inter­viewed by Mike Wal­lace (1959)

 

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Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel Shot on 16mm Film with Amateur Japanese Actors (1983)

in Film, Television | June 18th, 2014

The Dis­ney Chan­nel aired Tim Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel only once, on Hal­loween night in 1983, but it must have giv­en those few who saw the broad­cast much to pon­der over the fol­low­ing three decades. For all that time, the 35-minute adap­ta­tion of that old Ger­man folk­tale stood as per­haps the hard­est-to-see item in the Edward Scis­sorhands and The Night­mare Before Christ­mas auteur’s cat­a­log. Of course, back in 1983, the 25-year-old Bur­ton had­n’t yet made either of those movies, nor any of the oth­er beloved­ly askew fea­tures for which we know him today. He had to his name only a cou­ple of ani­mat­ed shorts made at CalArts and a stop-motion homage to his hero Vin­cent Price. Still, that added up to enough to land him this project, his first live-action film made as an adult, which he used as an out­let for his fas­ci­na­tion with Japan.

Using an all-Japan­ese cast, shoot­ing with the 16-mil­lime­ter aes­thet­ic of old mar­tial arts movies, and tak­ing a spe­cial-effects tech­nique or two from the Godzil­la man­u­al, Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel looks (and sounds) like no ver­sion of the sto­ry you’ve seen before, or will like­ly ever see again. But at least you can now watch it as often as you like, owing to its recent sud­den appear­ance on Youtube after that long absence from pub­lic viewa­bil­i­ty, bro­ken only by screen­ings at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and the Ciné­math­èque Française. In it we expere­ince the inter­sec­tion of the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, the new and strange free­dom of ear­ly cable tele­vi­sion, and the sheer audac­i­ty of a young film­mak­er — not to men­tion a heck of a hand-to-hand com­bat ses­sion between Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch who would make them din­ner. Her din­ner, that is.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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