ReFrederator Blog

We’re on the last branches of the family tree in our final Relatively Speaking Week offering. The cartoon is “Baby Be Good,” a 1935 Max Fleischer production starring Betty Boop, a film that raises a couple of provocative issues.

Question One: Who the hell is that kid? Is he supposed to be another one of those cartoon nephews with a suspiciously strong family resemblance? Or did, in fact, our sweet Betty give birth, and is now warbling her way through single parenthood (no trace of a father figure here — biological dad must still be in the inkwell.) Nobody tells us anything!

Question Two: Why was Paramount so ingenious about cranking out CHEATERS? I mean these guys left Disney in the dust when it came to creative ways of filling out the production schedule with minimum effort. This team pioneered the inventive re-use of old footage in their cartoons (remember howPopeye was always taking five [Read more…]

All right, I admit it! I’m a Hunky and Spunky junky! Max Fleischer’s great idea of a burro mother and son cartoon team was about as successful as New Coke, but I, for one, have always been inordinately fond of the little hay burners. Granted, aside from the duo itself, their half dozen or so starring films are pretty average-ish 1930’s cartoons — long on ‘cute,’ short on ‘funny’ — but, heck, they all have Hunky and Spunky, and I love Hunky and Spunky!

I love Spunky’s weirdly oversized head. I love the geeky donkey-speak Mom and offspring use to communicate. I love the large variety of clippy-cloppy sound effects employed for their ever shuffling hooves. Mostly, I love the shamelessly corny little narratives the Fleischer gang cooked up for the pair, always just an eyelash over the top on the maternal-instinct-heart-tug-thing.

So, we’re galloping ahead with our Relatively Speaking Week featuring the [Read more…]

Relatively Speaking Week trudges on with “A Scout with Gout,” a 1947Little Lulu cartoon from Paramount Famous Studios. ‘Marge’ (as in ‘Marge’s Little Lulu”) referred to Marjorie Henderson Bell, the cartoonist who introduced the tiny terror in the Saturday Evening Post and her beleaguered father. But most baby boomers remember Lulu for just about everything else she did outside that original venue — comic books, animated cartoons… even her stint as spokesperson for Kleenex tissues.

Don’t you just love Lulu’s pop in “A Scout with Gout?” A really zesty, full blooded personality —look at his body language describing the great outdoors. No doubt a lot of this extra punch is due to the fact that the director was Bill Tytla, one of the greatest character animators of all time. I suppose after drawing the demon king in “Fantasia,” everything would be anti-climatic, but, like a lot of Tytla’s post Disney work, “Scout” [Read more…]

I guess when Felix the Cat became a big deal they hadn’t quite nailed down any expectations for cartoon stardom yet. He might pop up with a wife in one film or, as in today’s installment, as the single parent to a whole mess of kids. Because “April Maze” is lousy with little Felixes, we thought it would be a perfect addition to our Relatively Speaking Week.

Trouble is, “April Maze” is also a great example of the problems the Pat Sullivan Studio and cat creator Otto Messmer had getting hip with the sound revolution. The film is a talkie (barely) from 1930, but it has the rhythms and structure of an old silent cartoon. Doesn’t quite make it. Still, if you’ve got the patience to wait out the repetitive redundancies (this one re-e-e-e-e-ealy gets its money’s worth out of each animated cycle) there’s some lovely stuff here. I love the way Felix and [Read more…]

It’s Relatively Speaking Week, and the idea was that we would trot out cartoon character kinfolk for the next few days. What you get today is “The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner,” a terrific Friz Freleng item from 1942, wherein Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd do a lot of yappin’ about rich Uncle Louie (or, as EF would have it, Uncle Wouie.)

We will ignore, for the moment, the inconvenient detail that the old guy never actually shows up, and focus instead on how fully these cultural icons fell into character so early in their screen careers. Bugs looks a bit scrawny and Elmer is positively corpulent — about this time Mr. Fudd seemed to suffer an alarming, though temporary, weight gain (I think the idea was for him to look more like the actor supplying his voice, Arthur Q. Bryan, but the end result has him more closely resembling a kidney bean.) [Read more…]

Okay, okay. We had a Superman film festival back in the summer — just thought we’d pull the plug on our Science Friction Week with one more starring the Kid from Krypton. And this is the first one! The famous one! The one that got nominated for an Academy Award!

Hard to imagine the impact of Max Fleischer’s pilot film, “Superman” in 1941. Nothing like it had ever been seen on movie screens! Realistic (more or less) animated figures, spectacular special effects, a straight faced (more or less) science fictiony story — all wrapped up in sleek, streamlined trimmings. The Man of Steel does battle with a death ray and a crazy scientist who’s lookin’ a lot like a chorus boy from a production of “The Mikado.” What a kick!

And the most amazing thing is this is, objectively, perhaps the weakest of the original Fleischer Superman cartoons! Narrative techniques would be sharpened, [Read more…]

Y’know how there’s always that thing? The blip that suddenly appears on popular culture radar — something that has nothing to do with YOUR everyday life, but seems boundlessly fascinating to professional comedy writers? Pretty soon the damn thing is shoehorned into every skit, monologue or movie, and before you can say “that’s so day before yesterday” it’s gone again. Last year it was ’speed dating’ (and I’ve seen the 32 sitcom episodes to prove it.) In 1933 it was ‘technocracy.’

Whatever the real definition was, technocracy quickly became the buzzword for anything futuristic and a little nutty. In today’s cartoon, “Techno-Cracked,” that means building your own robot with a jack o’ lantern head. This gets my vote as one of the best Flip the Frog films, full of goofy ideas and great, chunky, Ub Iwerks style animation. The mechanical man starts off being kinda funny, but he’s got those spooky hollow [Read more…]

Today we take a happy trip into outer space, 1930’s style. That means our starship is a sputtery football shaped thingie full of singing animals — the cartoon is Max Fleischer’s “Dancing on the Moon”, a romantic vision of the perfect honeymoon. Well, perfect for everyone except a couple of cats, who, let’s face it, probably should have looked into couple counseling long before making reservations outside our stratosphere.

ReFrederator rides again with Science Friction Week. Tell us how we are doin’!

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Dave Kirwan

Retro future stuff today. “All’s Fair at the Fair” was Max Fleischer’s animated anticipation to the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Looking back, this cartoon version of the world of tomorrow was only a tad more ridiculous than the straight faced predictions at the real deal.

The good news is this is one of those Max Fleischer cartoons full of crazy inventions — there are plenty of robots, “instant” things and environmentally challenged contraptions to amaze and delight. Our protagonists, Elmer and Mirandy, are plum dang tickled about the whole she-bang and eventually end up in some sort of art deco extreme make-over night club! I love the way the film takes a few seconds from all the astounding sights to let us hear those ‘candid’ comments as folks leave the futuristic dance floor.

Not every toon vision of technology run amuck is so darn cheery. SciFi looks a little bleaker tomorrow as [Read more…]

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