Drawing on Their Own Experience
The picture above is from “Making “Em Move,” a 1931 RKO/Aesop’s Fable. I’m always grabbing frames from this particular toon because A. it’s one of favorites and B. it’s a film in one of my favorite sub-genera, namely cartoons about people making cartoons (or, in this case funny animals with rubber hose arms making cartoons.) John Foster and Harry Bailey directed this prehistoric talkie, and it’s general plot gimmick (cartoon characters make, then exhibit their own cartoon) was reshaped and reused later for the likes of Popeye, Porky Pig and others.
Warner Brothers seemed to have a particular lock on this sort of thing. Another personal fave is “The Cartoonist’s Nightmare,” an early Looney Toon from Jack King that had an animator kidnapped and tortured by his own feisty drawings! Better known WB efforts like “You Ought to Be in Pictures,” and “Duck Amuck” had cartoon characters and their supposed masters interacting all over the place. Some pretty nutty notions about the relationship between creator and creation there.
For pure fantasy though, Seymour Kneitel’s 1958 “Ghost Writer” may take the cake. Casper the Ghost visits the Paramount Famous Cartoon Studio — a glamorous, sunny, very Hollywoodish hive of activity, that I suspect was a fairly idealized version of Paramount’s real-life east coast facility.
Anyone else have any favorite cartoons about cartoons?
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On March 30th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Paramount did an earlier, better, Casper called GHOST OF HONOR (1957) where Casper (at a Grauman’s Chinese Theatre World Premiere of one of his shorts - yeah, right) recounts to a reporter how he got his break in cartoons. A flashback reveals him visiting the sunny, sleek, modern-designed Paramount Cartoon Studios in Hollywood, where he scares the pants off of artists in every department. This cartoon features rare crossover cameos by Baby Huey, Herman & Katnip and Spunky Donkey.
Another Famous Studios cartoon - in the same vein - is HERMAN THE CATOONIST (1953) where Herman and Katnip chase each other around a cartoonists studio, using india ink, sharp pens and other various objects d’art as deadly weapond & projectiles. Incredibly (and hilariously) violent!
Yet another earlier Famous Studios favorite is CARTOONS AIN’T HUMAN (1943) in which Popeye makes a stick figure animated cartoon and performs the soundtrack live, while projecting it on an out-of-control movie projector. What an idea!
An even earlier Paramount cartoon, STOOPNACRACY (1934, a Max Fleischer Screen Song featuring Col. Stoopnagle and Budd), takes place in, and is about the inmates of, an insane asylum (aka a “nut house”) - most of which are identified as animated cartoonists!
On March 30th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Oops! (Actually double oops) I meant to post my acknowledgment to you, Jerry, that I was probably remembering both “Ghost of Honor” and “Ghost Writer” as one cartoon. Well, I am posting it now. Thanks again.
Still think the whole business of Paramount-Famous people telling everybody they were making cartoons in a state-of-the-art California studio kinda poignant.
On March 30th, 2006 at 12:00 am
The makers of GHOST OF HONOR and GHOST WRITERS were probably drawing on their idyllic memories of the modern Fleischer Studios in Miami, which was quite the state of the art animation facility in 1938-1943. As we know, Paramount moved the staff back to Manhattan and cranked out the Popeye and Casper cartoons from office space on 45th Street off Times Square (half a block away from today’s Nickelodeon headquaters on Broadway). In fact, one could consider the Nickelodeon Animation Studio in Burbank to be the realization of that idealized “Paramount Cartoon Studio” pictured in those films.
At least, I like to think so.