Acting Up
On with the Show Week, and we raise the curtain with “Hamateur Night” a Tex Avery cartoon made just about the time Tex Avery was starting to get really Tex Avery-ish. A bunch of performers, some animals, some human, do their stuff, get gonged, are dropped through trap doors, but return to compete for ‘best of show.’ All very, very silly, and most of it very funny.
Reach over, turn up the volume and listen to the voice artists. When “Hamateur” was released in 1939, I think Warner Brothers was beginning to ‘get it’ on funny recording sessions. Not only is Mel Blanc front and center, knocking himself out with eleventeen wildly different characters, but there are some unusually strong supporting voices too. Cliff Nazarro and Avery himself were doing a lot of the funny stuff in front of a mike for this one. I don’t know who or how they did the voice for the little flea-girl, but that bit always gets the biggest laugh outta me.
More show stoppers tomorrow.
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