Behold a Surreal 1933 Animation of Snow White, Featuring Cab Calloway & Betty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Greatest Cartoon of All Time

in Animation, Film | February 8th, 2024

Of the three col­lab­o­ra­tions jazz singer Cab Cal­loway made with cute car­toon leg­end Bet­ty Boop, this 1933 Dave Fleis­ch­er-direct­ed “Snow White” is prob­a­bly the most suc­cess­ful. It cer­tain­ly is the most strange—more hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry than the first in the series “Min­nie the Moocher”, and less slap­stick-dri­ven than “The Old Man of the Moun­tain.” It is a sin­gu­lar mar­vel and right­ly deserves being deemed “cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Unit­ed States Library of Con­gress and select­ed for preser­va­tion in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry in 1994. It was also vot­ed #19 of the 50 Great­est Car­toons of all time in a poll of lead­ing ani­ma­tors.

When she made her debut in 1930, Bet­ty Boop would have been rec­og­niz­able to audi­ences as the embod­i­ment of the flap­per and the sex­u­al free­dom of the Jazz Age that was cur­rent­ly in free-fall after the Wall Street crash of 1929. Only a few years before her pre­miere, Boop would have been the mas­cot of the age; now she was a bit­ter­sweet reminder of a time that had already passed. With a cham­pagne bub­ble of a voice, kiss curls, dar­ing hem­line, plung­ing neck­line, and the ever present garter belt, she was a car­toon char­ac­ter def­i­nite­ly not designed for kids. That her best films are col­lab­o­ra­tions with Cab Cal­loway attest to that. Cal­loway would make sure his Bet­ty Boop car­toons would screen in a city a week or two before he would play a gig. His “advance woman” as he called her helped sell more tick­ets.

Accom­pa­ny­ing her in this film are the Fleischer’s orig­i­nal char­ac­ter Koko the Clown and Bim­bo the Pup, which for this film are sort of emp­ty ves­sels: they pro­tect Bet­ty, they get knocked out, and Koko gets inhab­it­ed by the spir­it of Cab Cal­loway, who then turns into a ghost, all legs and head, no tor­so. (The ghost is ani­mat­ed through roto­scop­ing over Cal­loway’s own film footage.) The Queen, whose talk­ing mir­ror changes his mind over “the fairest in the land” once see­ing Bet­ty Boop, sen­tences her to death, and then chas­es her through the under­world before turn­ing into a drag­on. At the end, Boop and her gang turn the drag­on inside out like a sock, a gross gag not seen again (I’m going to guess) until one of the Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Spe­cials.

In the mid­dle of all this boun­cy, sur­re­al may­hem is Calloway’s ghost singing “St. James Infir­mary Blues,” a mourn­ful tale of a dead girl­friend and the singers plans for the funer­al. The ori­gin of the song is shroud­ed in mys­tery, pos­si­bly a folk bal­lad by way of New Orleans jazz. What­ev­er the source, Koko/Cab sings it to the now frozen and entombed Bet­ty Boop, with the sev­en dwarves as pall­bear­ers. Koko/Cab turns into a num­ber of objects dur­ing his dance, includ­ing a bot­tle of booze and a coin on a chain.

This Snow White does in fact take place dur­ing win­ter and writer Anne Blake­ley makes the case that the flap­per, the snow, the ice, the pas­sage through the under­world, and Calloway’s song allude to a fall from grace, inno­cence to expe­ri­ence, through drug abuse—in par­tic­u­lar the very snowy cocaine. (I mean, could be! But the film is so odd as to refute any defin­i­tive read­ing.)

The ani­ma­tion was designed and com­plet­ed by one man: Roland Cran­dall, pos­si­bly as a reward from Fleis­ch­er for not leav­ing for the sun­ny west coast and the more prof­itable Dis­ney. Cran­dall worked half a year on the project and that’s real­ly what gives it its one of a kind nature. Every ele­ment, whether ani­mat­ed or in the back­ground, has been lov­ing­ly ren­dered. Fore­ground and back­ground fight for your atten­tion, and when the film fin­ish­es, you want to start all over again to see what you missed.

Last­ly, let’s praise the vibe of this film, which places its “star” on ice for half the film, and seems none the worse for it. “Snow White”—four years before Disney’s fea­ture version—is a hypno­gog­ic vision, a half-remem­bered day­dream that takes place while the radio is turned down imper­cep­ti­bly low.

The ani­ma­tion will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Beethoven’s 5th: Watch an Animated Graphical Score

in Animation, Music | February 8th, 2024

Stephen Mali­nows­ki is a self-described “Music Ani­ma­tion Machine,” with a pen­chant for cre­at­ing ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal scores. Above, he does his thing with the first move­ment of Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny 5.

How does he make this mag­ic? Mali­nows­ki writes: “There were a lot of steps; here’s a short sum­ma­ry. I found a record­ing I could license and made the arrange­ments to use it. I found a MIDI file that was fair­ly com­plete, and import­ed that into the nota­tion pro­gram Sibelius. I com­pared it to a print­ed copy of the score from my library and fixed things that were wrong… Then, I lis­tened to the record­ing and com­pared that to the score, and mod­i­fied the score so that the tim­ings were more like what the orches­tra was actu­al­ly play­ing. I export­ed this as a MIDI file and ran it through my cus­tom frame-ren­der­ing soft­ware. Then, I made a “reduc­tion” of the score and col­ored it to match the col­ors I was plan­ning to use in the bar-graph score. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when I squished the bar-graph score enough to make room for the nota­tion score, too much detail was lost, so I end­ed up decid­ing not to use the nota­tion. Then I put all the pieces (ren­dered frames, audio, titles) togeth­er in Adobe Pre­miere and export­ed the movie as a Quick­Time file. Then, I used On2 Flix to con­vert the final file into Flash for­mat (so that YouTube’s con­ver­sion to their Flash for­mat would­n’t change it in unpre­dictable ways), and uploaded the result.”

Enjoy!

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Watch Dziga Vertov’s Soviet Toys: The First Soviet Animated Movie Ever (1924)

in Animation, History | February 7th, 2024

Dzi­ga Ver­tov is best known for his daz­zling city sym­pho­ny A Man with a Movie Cam­era, which was ranked by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine as the 8th best movie ever made. Yet what you might not know is that Ver­tov also made the Sovi­et Union’s first ever ani­mat­ed movie, Sovi­et Toys.

Con­sist­ing large­ly of sim­ple line draw­ings, the film might lack the verve and visu­al sophis­ti­ca­tion that marked A Man with a Movie Cam­era, but Ver­tov still dis­plays his knack for mak­ing strik­ing, pun­gent images. Yet those who don’t have an inti­mate knowl­edge of Sovi­et pol­i­cy of the 1920s might find the movie — which is laden with Marx­ist alle­gories — real­ly odd.

Sovi­et Toys came out in 1924, dur­ing Lenin’s New Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy (NEP), which gave some mar­ket incen­tives to small farm­ers. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the farm­ers start­ed pro­duc­ing a lot more food than before, and soon a whole new class of mid­dle­man traders formed — the reviled “NEP­men.”

The movie opens with a NEP­man — a bloat­ed car­i­ca­ture of a Cap­i­tal­ist (who coin­ci­den­tal­ly looks vague­ly like Niki­ta Khrushchev) — devour­ing a mas­sive heap of food. He’s so stuffed that he spends much of the rest of the movie sprawled out on the floor, much in the same way one might imag­ine Jamie Dimon after Thanks­giv­ing din­ner. Then he belch­es rich­es at a woman who is can-can­ning on his dis­tend­ed bel­ly. I said this film is odd.

Lat­er, as a cou­ple of squab­bling Russ­ian Ortho­dox priests look on, a work­er tries to extract mon­ey from the NEP­man by cut­ting his gut with a huge pair of scis­sors. When that fails, the work­er and a pass­ing peas­ant fuse bod­ies to cre­ate a two-head­ed being that stomps on the Capitalist’s bel­ly, which pops open like a piña­ta filled with cash. Then mem­bers of the Red Army pile togeth­er and form a sort of human pyra­mid before turn­ing into a giant tree. They hang the Cap­i­tal­ist along with the priests. The end.

Some of the ref­er­ences in this movie are clear: The work­er’s use of scis­sors points to the “Scis­sors Cri­sis” – an attempt by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to cor­rect the price imbal­ance between agri­cul­ture and indus­tri­al goods. And the phys­i­cal meld­ing of the peas­antry and the pro­le­tari­at is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the nev­er quite real­ized dream of the Bol­she­viks. Oth­er images are as obscure as they are weird — the leer­ing close ups of the Cap­i­tal­ist, the NEP­man’s girl­friend who dis­ap­pears into his stom­ach, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary film­mak­er who has the eyes of a cam­era lens and the mouth of a cam­era shut­ter. They feel like some­thing out of a Marx­ist fever dream.

Sovi­et Toys can be found in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Named the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

A Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion of Stephen King’s Short Sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1986)

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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The Russian Animators Who Have Spent 40 Years Animating Gogol’s “The Overcoat”

in Animation, Film, Literature | February 6th, 2024

“Steady Pushkin, mat­ter-of-fact Tol­stoy, restrained Chekhov have all had their moments of irra­tional insight which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly blurred the sen­tence and dis­closed a secret mean­ing worth the sud­den focal shift,” writes Vladimir Nabokov in his Lec­tures on Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture. “But with Gogol this shift­ing is the very basis of his art.” When, “as in the immor­tal ‘The Over­coat,’ he real­ly let him­self go and pot­tered on the brink of his pri­vate abyss, he became the great­est artist that Rus­sia has yet pro­duced.” Tough though that act is to fol­low, gen­er­a­tions of film­mak­ers around the world have attempt­ed to adapt for the screen that mas­ter­work of a short sto­ry about the out­er­wear-relat­ed strug­gles of an impov­er­ished bureau­crat.

One par­tic­u­lar pair of Russ­ian film­mak­ers has actu­al­ly spent a gen­er­a­tion or two mak­ing their own ver­sion of “The Over­coat”: the mar­ried cou­ple Yuri Norstein and Franch­es­ka Yarbuso­va, who began the project back in 1981.

Their nine­teen-sev­en­ties short films Hedge­hog in the Fog and Tale of Tales had already received inter­na­tion­al acclaim from both fans and fel­low cre­ators of ani­ma­tion (their cham­pi­ons include no less an auteur than Hayao Miyaza­ki), with dis­tinc­tive­ly cap­ti­vat­ing effects achieved through a dis­tinc­tive­ly painstak­ing process. Whol­ly ana­log, it has grown only more labor-inten­sive as dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has advanced so rapid­ly over the past few decades — decades that have also brought about great social, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic changes in their home­land.

The Atroc­i­ty Guide video above offers a glimpse into Norstein and Yarbuso­va’s lives and work on the “The Over­coat” — to the extent that the two can even be sep­a­rat­ed at this point. Once, they were vic­tims of Sovi­et cen­sor­ship and sus­pi­cion, giv­en the ambigu­ous morals of their visu­al­ly lav­ish pro­duc­tions. Now, in their eight­ies and with this 65-minute-film nowhere near com­ple­tion (but five min­utes of which you can see in the video above), the prob­lem seems to have more to do with their own artis­ti­cal­ly com­mend­able but whol­ly imprac­ti­cal cre­ative ethos. They work to “sadis­ti­cal­ly high” stan­dards on a film that, as Norstein believes, “should be con­stant­ly chang­ing” — while also prop­er­ly express­ing the Gogo­lian themes of strug­gle, pri­va­tion, and futil­i­ty that can “only be cre­at­ed amid feel­ings of dis­com­fort and uncer­tain­ty” — hence their insis­tence on stay­ing in Rus­sia.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Three Ani­mat­ed Shorts by the Ground­break­ing Russ­ian Ani­ma­tor Fyo­dor Khitruk

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

A Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion of Stephen King’s Short Sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1986)

Enjoy 15+ Hours of the Weird and Won­der­ful World of Post Sovi­et Russ­ian Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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My Neighbor Totoro Inspires a Line of Traditional Japanese Handicrafts

in Animation, Art, Design, History, Travel | January 4th, 2024

We sup­pose it’s con­ceiv­able that a gift of a wood­en Totoro fig­urine, hand-carved from a sin­gle block using 50 dif­fer­ent kinds of chis­els, might spark a rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese craft and nature in the next gen­er­a­tion…

Or, they may be left wish­ing you’d giv­en them a vast­ly more hug­gable machine-made plushie ver­sion, espe­cial­ly if you can’t help suck­ing in your breath every time they start fum­bling with that exquis­ite­ly craft­ed ￥330,000 yen heir­loom-to-be. (That’s $2341.81 in US dol­lars.)

Of course, direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture My Neigh­bor Totoro has legions of fans of all ages, and some will con­sid­er them­selves quite lucky if they win the lot­tery that grants them the abil­i­ty to pur­chase such a trea­sure.

They’re not only carved by skilled arti­sans in Ina­mi, the city of wood­carv­ing, but the wood is also that of a cam­phor tree — the nat­ur­al habi­tat of the mys­te­ri­ous, mag­i­cal Totoro! (It’s also con­sid­ered holy by prac­ti­tion­ers of the Shin­to reli­gion.)

Still, if it’s unclear that the recip­i­ent will tru­ly appre­ci­ate such thought­ful­ness, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off going with anoth­er offer­ing from Stu­dio Ghibli’s Totoro-themed col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nak­a­gawa Masashichi Shoten, a pur­vey­or of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese crafts.

Per­haps a￥4180 bud vase fired in Ure­shi­no City’s Edo-peri­od Yozan Kiln, fea­tur­ing Totoro or a clus­ter of susuwatari, the pom pom-like soot sprites infest­ing the Kusak­abe fam­i­ly’s new home, who also play a part in Spir­it­ed Away.

Maybe a tiny Totoro bell amulet, mold­ed by crafts­men in Odawara, cel­e­brat­ed for the qual­i­ty of their met­al­work since the ear­ly 1500s, when they out­fit­ted samu­rai with weapons, armor and hel­mets?

What about a Totoro-embla­zoned trea­sure box from Yat­suo, made of sten­cil-dyed hand­made washi paper? There’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with stash­ing your acorn col­lec­tion in an old Altoid’s tin, but this ves­sel comes with his­toric pedi­gree:

As one of the lead­ing towns along the trunk road, Yatu­so flour­ished through … pro­duc­tion of wrap­ping paper for the nation-wide famous “Toya­ma Med­i­cine”. At its gold­en age, from the Edo Era to the begin­ning of the Mei­ji Era in the 19th cen­tu­ry, many peo­ple were engaged in paper­mak­ing by hand­work in their homes. Yat­suo Japan­ese paper was expect­ed to be unbreak­able because it was used as pack­age for expen­sive med­i­cine and at the same time it should look bril­liant. It had to be thick and stout so that it could be imper­vi­ous to water and the label print­ed on the sur­face would not be smeared.

The list of Totoro-inspired tra­di­tion­al crafts is impres­sive. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling:

Chusen-dyed tenugui hand­ker­chiefs and t‑shirts…

Dish­tow­els made from five lay­ers of Kayaori fab­ric that “was intro­duced to Japan dur­ing the Nara peri­od and is said to allow wind to pass through but keep mos­qui­toes out”…

Tiny Ari­ta ware acorn plates that reward mem­bers of the clean plate club with a view of the Cat­bus… 

View the col­lec­tion and learn more about February’s lot­tery for a chance to pur­chase a Cam­phor wood Totoro here.

Hands-on fans may pre­fer to cul­ti­vate an appre­ci­a­tion for tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese hand­i­crafts by attempt­ing a DIY Totoro.

Via Spoon & Tam­a­go/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Stream Hun­dreds of Hours of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Tour of Stu­dio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Cre­ates the Worlds of Spir­it­ed Away, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Oth­er Clas­sics

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Early Version of Mickey Mouse Enters the Public Domain on January 1, 2024

in Animation, Creativity, Film, Law | January 1st, 2024

Hap­py New Year!

We can now “do to Dis­ney what Dis­ney did to the great works of the pub­lic domain before him,” accord­ing to Har­vard law pro­fes­sor and pub­lic domain expert, Lawrence Lessig, hailed by The New York­er as “the most impor­tant thinker on intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in the Inter­net era.”

On Jan­u­ary 1, Mick­ey Mouse and his con­sort, Min­nie, wrig­gled free of their cre­ator’s iron fist for the first time in cor­po­rate his­to­ry, as their debut per­for­mance in Steam­boat Willie entered the pub­lic domain along with thou­sands of oth­er 1928 works — Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover, All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, and The House at Pooh Cor­ner to name but a star­ry few.

Dis­ney has been noto­ri­ous­ly pro­tec­tive of its con­trol over its spokesmouse, suc­cess­ful­ly push­ing Con­gress to adopt the Son­ny Bono Copy­right Exten­sion Act of 1998, which kept the public’s mitts off of Steam­boat Willie, and, more to the point, Mick­ey Mouse, for 25 years beyond the terms of the Copy­right Act of 1976.

But now our day has come…

Don’t be shy!

Dig in!

Dis­ney always did.

As Lessig remarked in a 2003 lec­ture at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty:

Walt Dis­ney embraced the free­dom to take, change and return ideas from our pop­u­lar cul­ture. The rip, mix and burn cul­ture of the Inter­net is Dis­ney-famil­iar.

Cin­derel­la, Snow White, Pinoc­chio — Uncle Walt knew how to take lib­er­ties and make mon­ey with cap­ti­vat­ing source mate­r­i­al, a tra­di­tion that con­tin­ued through such lat­er car­toon block­busters as The Lit­tle Mer­maid and Dis­ney’s Snow Queen update, Frozen.

Steam­boat Willie was­n’t con­jured from thin air either. Its plot and title char­ac­ter were inspired by Buster Keaton’s Steam­boat Bill, released two months before Disney’s ani­mat­ed short went into pro­duc­tion.

A few caveats for those eager to take a crack at the Mouse…

Steam­boat Willie’s new­found pub­lic domain sta­tus doesn’t give you carte blanche to mess around with Mick­ey and Min­nie in all their many forms.

Stick to the music-lov­ing black-and-white trick­ster with rub­ber­hose arms, but­ton-trimmed short-shorts, and the dis­tinct­ly rodent-like tail that went by the way­side for Mickey’s appear­ance in 1941’s The Lit­tle Whirl­wind.

Nor can Steam­boat Willie-era Mick­ey become your new logo. Plop the char­ac­ter down in new nar­ra­tives, yes. Use him in a rec­og­niz­able way for pur­pos­es of adver­tis­ing unre­lat­ed prod­ucts, no.

Mis­lead view­ers into think­ing your mash up is Dis­ney-approved at your own risk. A Dis­ney spokesper­son told CNN:

We will, of course, con­tin­ue to pro­tect our rights in the more mod­ern ver­sions of Mick­ey Mouse and oth­er works that remain sub­ject to copy­right, and we will work to safe­guard against con­sumer con­fu­sion caused by unau­tho­rized uses of Mick­ey and our oth­er icon­ic char­ac­ters.

Don’t think they don’t mean it.

Author Robert Thomp­son, the found­ing direc­tor of Syra­cuse University’s Bleier Cen­ter for Tele­vi­sion and Pop­u­lar Cul­ture told The Guardian that even though “the orig­i­nal Mick­ey isn’t the one we all think of and have on our T‑shirts or pil­low­cas­es up in the attic some­place,” the com­pa­ny is hyper­vig­i­lant about pro­tect­ing its assets:

Sym­bol­i­cal­ly of course, copy­right is impor­tant to Dis­ney and it has been very care­ful about their copy­rights to the extent that laws have changed to pro­tect them. This is the only place I know that some obscure high school in the mid­dle of nowhere can put on The Lion King and the Dis­ney copy­right peo­ple show up.

Per­haps your best bet is to make sure your work skews toward satire or par­o­dy, a la the infa­mous hor­ror film Win­nie the Pooh: Blood and Hon­ey, which cap­i­tal­ized on author A.A. Milne’s 1926 book, Win­nie the Pooh’s entrance into the pub­lic domain, while traf­fick­ing in some famil­iar char­ac­ter design. Dis­ney ulti­mate­ly let it slide.

Fumi Games is already poised to take a sim­i­lar gam­ble with MOUSE, a blood-soaked, “grit­ty, jazz-fueled shoot­er” set to drop in 2025:

If you’re not yet ready to take the plunge, Mickey’s pals Plu­to and Don­ald Duck will join him in the pub­lic domain lat­er this decade, so don your think­ing caps and mark your cal­en­dars.

For a more in-depth look at the ways you can — and can­not — use Steam­boat Willie-era Mick­ey Mouse in your own work, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain sup­plies a very thor­ough guide here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Her vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, returns to New York City on Feb­ru­ary 29, 2024. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Beautiful Anarchy of the Earliest Animated Cartoons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Early Animations

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons | December 29th, 2023

Ear­ly in his col­lect­ing odyssey, ani­ma­tion his­to­ri­an, archivist, and edu­ca­tor Tom­my José Stathes earned the hon­orif­ic Car­toon Cryp­to­zo­ol­o­gist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based col­lec­tive of film nerds, vid­iots, and pro­gram­mers inves­ti­gat­ing the fur­thest reach­es of the mov­ing image uni­verse.”

More recent­ly, George Wille­man, a nitrate film expert on the Library of Con­gress’ film preser­va­tion team dubbed him “the King of Silent Ani­ma­tion.”

The seed of Stathes’ endur­ing pas­sion took root in his 90s child­hood, when slapped togeth­er VHS antholo­gies of car­toons from the 30s and 40s could be picked up for a cou­ple of bucks in gro­ceries and drug­stores. These finds typ­i­cal­ly includ­ed one or two silent-era rar­i­ties, which is how he became acquaint­ed with Felix the Cat and oth­er favorites who now dom­i­nate his Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion Archive.

He squeezed his par­ents and grand­par­ents for mem­o­ries of car­toons screened on tele­vi­sion and in the­aters dur­ing their youth, and began research­ing the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion.

Real­iz­ing how few of the ear­ly car­toons he was learn­ing about could be wide­ly viewed, he set out to col­lect and archive as many exam­ples as pos­si­ble, and to share these trea­sures with new audi­ences.

His col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly con­sists of some 4,000 ani­mat­ed reels, truf­fled up from antique shops, flea mar­kets, and eBay. In addi­tion to his Car­toons on Film YouTube chan­nel, he hosts reg­u­lar in-per­son Car­toon Car­ni­vals, often curat­ed around hol­i­day themes.

Stathes’ pas­sion project is giv­ing many once-pop­u­lar char­ac­ters a sec­ond and in some cas­es, third act.

Take Farmer Alfal­fa, (occa­sion­al­ly ren­dered as Al Fal­fa), the star of 1923’s The Fable of the Alley Cat, an install­ment in the Aesop’s Fables series, which ran from 1921 to 1929.

His first appear­ance was in direc­tor Paul Ter­ry’s Down on Phoney Farm from 1915, but as Stathes observes, baby boomers grew up watch­ing him on TV:

Near­ly all of these folks who men­tion the char­ac­ter will also ref­er­ence ‘hun­dreds’ of mice. Few may have real­ized that, while the Farmer Alfal­fa car­toons run­ning on tele­vi­sion at that time were already old, the films starred one of the ear­li­est recur­ring car­toon char­ac­ters, and one that enjoyed an incred­i­bly long career com­pared with his car­toon con­tem­po­raries.

The Fable of the Alley Cat honks a lot of famil­iar vin­tage car­toon horns — slap­stick, may­hem, David tri­umph­ing over Goliath… cats and mice.

Stathes describes it as “a rather sin­is­ter day in the life of Farmer Al Fal­fa — It’s clear that the ani­mal king­dom tends to despise him! — and his doc­u­men­ta­tion is metic­u­lous:

The ver­sion seen here was pre­pared for TV dis­tri­b­u­tion in the 1950s by Stu­art Pro­duc­tions. The music tracks were orig­i­nal­ly com­posed by Win­ston Sharples for the Van Beuren ‘Rain­bow Parade’ car­toons in the mid-1930s.

The mis­matched duo, Mutt and Jeff, got their start in dai­ly news­pa­per comics, before mak­ing the leap to ani­mat­ed shorts.

Ani­ma­tion con­nois­seurs go bananas for the per­spec­tive shift at the 14 sec­ond mark of Laugh­ing Gas (1917), a rar­i­ty Stathes shares as a ref­er­ence copy from the orig­i­nal 35mm nitrate form, with the promise of a full restora­tion in the future.

(A num­ber of Stathes’ acqui­si­tions have dete­ri­o­rat­ed over the years or sus­tained dam­age through improp­er stor­age.)

Dinky Doo­dle and his dog Weak­heart were 1920s Bray Stu­dios crowd­pleasers whose stint on tele­vi­sion is evi­denced by the mid­cen­tu­ry voice over that was added to Dinky Doo­dle’s Bed­time Sto­ry (1926).

The char­ac­ters’ cre­ator, direc­tor Wal­ter Lantz appears as “Pop” in the above live sequences.

Car­toons On Film has coaxed Koko the Clown, Flip the Frog, Bon­zo the Pup, and Mick­ey Mouse pre­cur­sor, Oswald the Lucky Rab­bit, out of moth­balls for our view­ing plea­sure.

Stathes’ col­lec­tion also dredges up some objec­tion­able peri­od titles and con­tent, Lit­tle Black Sam­bo, Red­skin Blues, and Korn Plas­tered in Africa to name a few.

Stathes is mind­ful of con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties, but stops short of allow­ing them to scrub these works from the his­toric record. He warns would-be view­ers of The Chi­na­man that it con­tains a “racist speech bal­loon as well as an inter­ti­tle that was cut from the lat­er TV ver­sion for obvi­ous rea­sons:”

Such was the vul­gar ter­mi­nol­o­gy in those days. To ques­tion or cen­sor these films would be deny­ing our his­to­ry.

Begin your explo­rations of Tom­my José Stathes’ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion Archive here and if so inclined, con­tribute to the cost­ly stor­age of these rar­i­ties with a Ko-fi dona­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Introduction to Vince Guaraldi, the Jazz Composer Who Created the Best Christmas Album Ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas

in Animation, Music | December 23rd, 2023

When A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas first aired 58 years ago, few had any con­fi­dence that it would be a hit. Its sto­ry and ani­ma­tion, bare-bones even by the stan­dards of mid-nine­teen-six­ties tele­vi­sion, made a pos­i­tive impres­sion on nei­ther CBS’ exec­u­tives nor on many of the spe­cial’s own cre­ators. They did­n’t expect that this very sim­plic­i­ty would turn it into a peren­ni­al hol­i­day favorite — nor, pre­sum­ably, that its sound­track by the Vince Guaral­di Trio would become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums in exis­tence. Now that we’re well into the sea­son when the music from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is heard every day in homes, cafés, and shop­ping malls all around the world, why not get an intro­duc­tion to Guaral­di, the man and his music, from pop cul­ture video essay­ist Matt Drap­er?

“Born in San Fran­cis­co in 1928, Guaral­di cred­it­ed his two uncles with spark­ing his inter­est in jazz as a child, with the future musi­cian already learn­ing the piano by age sev­en,” says Drap­er. After serv­ing in the Kore­an War and return­ing home to study music at San Fran­cis­co State Uni­ver­si­ty, Guaral­di began to “pur­sue his love of jazz in local clubs.”

He soon formed his trio, and record­ing their first albums in the mid-nine­teen-fifties, he “expand­ed his use of Latin jazz and bossa nova.” In 1962 Guaral­di scored his first hit with “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” a sin­gle from an album inspired by Mar­cel Camus’ Black Orpheus. It was a radio broad­cast of that song, so the sto­ry goes, that caught the ear of Lee Mendel­son, who would pro­duce A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, as he crossed the Gold­en Gate Bridge in a taxi­cab.

Mendel­son ini­tial­ly com­mis­sioned Guaral­di to com­pose the music for A Boy Named Char­lie Brown, a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary that ulti­mate­ly nev­er aired. But its record­ing ses­sions brought forth “Linus and Lucy,” which became Peanuts’ de fac­to theme song, and when Coca-Cola agreed to spon­sor a Peanuts Christ­mas spe­cial in 1965 — a scant six months before Christ­mas itself — Guaral­di was called back to score it. “A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is a rather melan­cholic sto­ry cen­ter­ing on Char­lie’s search for mean­ing and worth in the hol­i­day sea­son,” says Drap­er, “so it’s fit­ting that a large por­tion of Guaraldi’s score is tinged with sad­ness.” Yet “Guaraldi’s melan­choly isn’t over­wrought or forced; rather, it’s minor and sub­tle,” unlike the aver­age film score that tries to “beat its lis­ten­ers over the head with emo­tion.”

The sound­track album, which you can hear (and see accom­pa­nied by a Yule fire­place) on the offi­cial Vince Guaral­di Youtube chan­nel, offers musi­cal vari­ety from the “ton of swing­ing style” in its ver­sion of “O Tanen­baum” to the “waltz brim­ming with ener­gy” of “Skat­ing” to “Christ­mas Is Com­ing,” with its “hints of rock-and-roll.” In the video just above, com­pos­er-Youtu­ber Charles Cor­nell explains what makes it “with­out a doubt, the best Christ­mas album ever” (a title held along with that of the best-sell­ing jazz album in his­to­ry after Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue), not least its being less “in-your-face Christ­mas” than oth­er sim­i­lar­ly themed record­ings. Yet he also acknowl­edges that Guaraldi’s most beau­ti­ful com­po­si­tion for a Peanuts spe­cial isn’t in A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, but It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown, from 1966. When next fall fall rolls around, do make “Great Pump­kin Waltz” the first song you hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

Why “White Christ­mas,” “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Oth­er Clas­sic Christ­mas Songs Come from the 1940s

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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