Happy Holidays Post #1
Howdy Readers! One of the loyal ones, Al, requested more “Nize Baby” strips. Alas, I only have one left, but it’s appropriate for this time of year, originally ran 12-25-1927. Papa is in trouble after trying to rescue his baby from an artificial chimney. After Papa goes through a sooty stove pipe, he is an “Huncle Tom’s Kebin” Santa, so he won’t be recognized and beaten up by Looey’s pal and ersatz Santa, Shoot. Shoot thinks that Papa was trying to rob his “Selvation Harmy” chimney! Henjoy this one, from the Los Angeles Examiner and the manic pen of Milt Gross.
Felix this week is from 7-20 to 7-26-1936. The Dooit’s butler, Snobbs, is still trying to mind Mrs. Boo’s baby. I like the 7/24 See-Saw gag, as Felix laughs uproariously at Snobb’s attempt to balance his weight against the baby’s. The Sunday page from 7/26 is beautifully drawn, Uncle Minus’s devining rod finds gold collar buttons, saving Felix’s home life once again. Bobby Dazzler’s kid brother in the top strip, looks like “Vontzy” from the Charles Mintz Scrappy cartoons!
Krazy this week is from 1-8 to 1-13-1940. Krazy discusses his musical ancestry in the 1/9, branching out to Kat Whiskas in the 1-10. If you’ve ever owned a crystal radio set, you’ll know what kind of “Cat Whisker” Krazy is referring to. It’s a very thin wire that moves over the tightly coiled wire that is the heart of the radio, and tunes in the stations by touching different parts of the coil. By the way, what happened to Offissa Pupp’s buttons and star in the last panel of 1/9? Were his ancestors so “hot” that the tin ornaments melted off his chest? I’ll end the post this time with another column from 8-1-1928 illustrated by Webb Smith. I’ll try to post again before the sleigh touches down!
charlie says:
I never get too many of these-I love them-charlie
David Ice says:
Question for you Mark. Being a film editor (and an animation buff), and having read Shamus Culhane’s Book “Animation Script to Screen” and plowing through exposure sheets and all, I was wondering–and if anybody would know, you would:
In the days of successive exposure Technicolor (i.e. WB Cartoons, Lantz, MGM, etc) would the cameraman shoot the entire cartoon on one negative roll (i.e. Scenes 1,2,3,4, etc) or would they just shoot one scene, slate it, and send it off to Technicolor to get a IB daily of a 5′ shot? Or would they typically shoot, say, 50 or 100′ of contiguous animation, then ship that off? It seems to me that doing individual shots would be time consuming and expensive, but wow, shooting a whole 540 foot cartoon would be nerve wracking. Culhane in his book talks about how extremely expensive a retake was…..so I was wondering. One shot at a time, or a sequence, or a whole short? I know today with digital it’s irrelevant, but it’s an archaic trivia bit I’ve always wondered about.
Dave Ice