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Post Toasties
I came across a small collection of Milt Gross’s “Nize Baby” from 1927 and 1928, mostly from the Los Angeles Examiner. This week’s strip is from 4-10-1927. I don’t have a scanner big enough, so I took digital photos and tried to enhance them as much as I could. These pages are literally falling apart, that’s why the dark chunks showing through. Those chunks are the rug on my floor.  Also from the LA Examiner, I’ve reprinted part of an article called, “Speaking of Wives of Our Great Men” (4-11-1926), illustrated by the creator of the “flypaper sequence” from “Playful Pluto”, Webb Smith! Webb Smith and Bob Kuwahara, creator of “Marvelous Mike” (who is a pretty “nize baby” himself), both worked in the story department at Disney, Smith was more of a concept artist who wrote with his drawings, and Kuwahara was the first Disney story sketch man, who specialized in visualizing scripted words.Â
     In the daily strips this week, Krazy Kat (9-11 to 9-16-1939), spends the week doing gags with a pop-up toaster that tosses bricks! Marvelous Mike (4-22 to 4-27-1957) this week concludes Mike’s stint as a stockbroker. The baby genius solves the trucking company mess by getting Tempo trucking to ship produce on Overall’s trucks, thus taking advantage of the lower shipping costs. With his managerial chops, he could be another Fred Hoertel! (Family joke.)
Vincent Lives
Hi Everyone,
Vincent Davis’s Memorial was celebrated at the home of LeeAnne and Monte Young out in Woodland Hills on Sunday, June 7th. Vince’s wife Hiroko organized it and almost 100 people turned out. In the photo third from the top, you can see Ted Woolery, Mariko Chouinard, Roger Chouinard and Chuck Swenson. In the fourth photo down, John Kafka and David Brain pose to be digitized. All these good people worked with and knew Vincent, Roger Chouinard went to school with Vince. There were so many old friends there, Libby Simon, Jill Stirdivant, Jim Duffy, Frank Furlong, Fred Wolf, Kunimi Terada, Robert Alvarez among the throng. Lunch was served, mostly from Brent’s Deli, but with a lot of home made concoctions, mostly desserts, supplied by good friends of Vince. “Dr. Octopus” played on DVD in the living room with a lot of Vince’s animated commercials and clips from shows he worked on. “Doc Oc” was just as funny and peculiar as it was the last time I saw it, almost 20 years ago! I had forgotten that Chuck Menville played the hero, and there was the unforgettable Sylvia Dees playing the heroine. I think Vincent played “Doc Oc”, but I don’t remember him actually admitting to it. There was a little boy watching it who got very anxious when any adults got too close to the TV set, he was afraid that the Octopus was going to be turned off! He took it very seriously, even though the whole thing was a spoof. When you’ve never seen an old serial chapter, maybe you think that “Doc Oc” is the real thing! Horrors!
      Fred Wolf told a funny story about Vince. Fred and Vince had a very serious business meeting to attend, and of course Vince dressed appropriately. In a camouflage outfit, complete with camouflage hat, camouflage sunglasses, camouflage shirt, camouflage jacket, camouflage tie, camouflage shoes and camouflage shoelaces! Fred told Vince that he looked ridiculous, and that he ought to change to something more sedate for the meeting. Fred said to Vince: “Why would you want to go to the meeting dressed in that camouflage outfit?” Vince replied: “I didn’t want them to see me.”
 That’s such a typical Davis dalliance, always be the most ridiculous at the most serious times, sticking pins to the pompous. That’s Vincent in one of his green polka-dot clown outfits in the photo at the top of the post, and posing by his beloved BMW motorcycle with the side car, which he bought from Chuck Swenson. Riding in that sidecar was like riding in a Mixmaster, you felt like a strawberry milkshake at the end of the ride.
There were so many great stories flowing out about Vince, and Cathy and I spent so much time talking to folks we hadn’t seen for years, that four o’clock seemed to come at one thirty! Vince’s spirit really took us all over for the afternoon. He got a lot of old friends back together again, I think he would have liked that.
I want to thank all of you who posted comments on my last article. I think “So Long, Vincent Davis” had more response than anything I’ve written on here so far.
In the strips this week, we have Krazy Kat from 9-4-1939 to 9-9. Ignatz thinks he’s Lindberg this week. Â Marvelous Mike this time is from 4-15-1957 to 4-20. Cliff Crump’s boss, Mr. Kimball, faints dead away when he finds out that Mike is the financial genius that got everybody to invest in Tempo Trucking. Kimball changes his mind and brings Mike to the stockholder’s meeting when Mike tells him he has a solution for disposing of the overvalued stock. Please remember to click on the small images to display the pictures larger for comfortable viewing. Enjoy!
 
So long, Vincent Davis-1944-2009
Hi again, Readers. Here is the post I promised to publish. It has now been approved, and I’ve posted my favorite photo of Vincent and me.  He was a very dear friend of mine, and will be sadly missed, read on:
How do I say good-bye to a person who was practically a second father to me, who made me take down endless lists of my faults over the telephone and made me laugh about them, consoled and counseled me through many hard times and bleak patches, got Cathy and I to visit him and his wife-to-be Hiroko in Tokyo, took us up with him in a Cessna (he had a pilot’s license) many times over the Los Angeles basin and over Catalina, scattering the native bison as we came in for a landing. He sheltered my film collection in his house from the FBI back in the paranoid-1970s, took me horseback riding along the roads of Shadow Hills, got together with Cathy and me every year on my birthday for at least the last 15 years and was generally “there” for me in a friendship that lasted for 38 years!
Vincent Davis is little-known outside of the animation industry. He had many nick-names, “Vincent”, “Vince”, “V.D.”(he almost always called himself V.D. when he called me on the phone), “Been-Sent” was what his wife Hiroko often called him, “Red” was one of the last nicknames he went by, used by only a select group of friends from his neighborhood. He was a really good cartoonist, who really aspired to do a comic strip, but never sold one. He and his friend of the time, Bob Foster, did several issues of MYRON MOOSE FUNNIES in the early 1970s. Vince did a great critique of fandom in his two page masterpiece; “Comic Book Fans” published in GRAPHIC STORY MAGAZINE, edited by his friend Bill Spicer, comics afficiando and great lettering man. He also did a two page comic story about his adventures with becoming legally self-employed and his close encounter with the State Board of Equalization (they collect sales tax in California). He found a representative of the State Board literally waiting for him on his doorstep when he came home one night. Vince had not been charging his customers sales tax on his free lance animation jobs, and the Board wanted their cut and a fine! Vince looked at the whole episode through a jaundiced eye, and turned it into a comic book story. It was also printed as a poster, back in the “big poster” days of the 1970s. Vince could draw anything and make it funny, his sketch books were a delight to look upon. He showed me a book years ago with one page after another of funny birds, that just flowed from his pen. In the late 1960s and though the early 1980s, Vincent was a top free-lancer in the animation business, picking up many commercials and bits and pieces of TV shows and the occasional animated feature. We worked together on one, THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD (1974). Vince had picked up a long sequence on the picture in which the wind-up toys, the Mouse and his Child, tried to become self-winding. There was some dialog with an owl character, which I helped Vince to write. He gave me a few scenes of his sequence to animate with the Mouse tossing his little kid up in the air and down, he liked what I did with it. Alas, we worked together very little, I received no credit on the picture, as this was Vince’s sequence. Vince was highly respected by his peers, the cartoonist Bob Zamboni once told a friend of mine; “You’ll Never Touch Vince.”
In the 1990s, Vince made a transition from free-lance animator to a producer. He worked on GARFIELD AND FRIENDS for Film Roman, directed C. BEAR AND JAMAL in 1998 for Film Roman, was a producer on COW AND CHICKEN for Hanna-Barbera in 1998, and produced THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY for Cartoon Network in 2005. Vince animated on the Emmy Award winning children’s special “Free to Be, You and Me” which Marlo Thomas produced for Murakami-Wolf films. He worked on the DUCK TALES program for Disney TV, which Vince was highly critical of, being a charter member of the Carl Barks fan club. One of the last shows he worked on was the BATMAN show for Warner Bros. TV in 2006-2007. Vince would kill me if he knew that I was writing about his credits, he hated almost everything he ever worked on. He used to tell me, “Name the worst thing you’ve ever done, I’ll BOTTOM it!” He did win the Annie Award for producing, however. He made fun of the award, sarcastically stating, “I’ve had SO MANY offers and my prices have gone up since I won this award.”
Vince was a cartoonist to the core, taking no one and no body seriously. He almost always avoided personal questions, preferring to keep his friends on the defensive. Those on the receiving end of his wit almost always laughed, through their blushes. He could get intensely personal, asking questions that an ordained minister or a psychologist might ask. This was ironic, as Vince was neither a preacher (very non-religious) nor a trained psychologist. Vince was a wonder at communicating with strangers. He could get very intense with a new acquaintance very fast. Vince looked very funny to begin with (he often dressed in a green polka-dot clown suit on Halloween), and his looks plus a penetrating wit made a lot of instant friends for him. Yet, Vincent didn’t seem to like it when friends tried to find out too much personal information about HIM. Vince preferred to be the revealer, NOT the revealed. He was a voracious reader and student of everything, especially his fellow humans. When I first met Vincent, I was going to Chouinard Art Institute in downtown L.A. One of my teachers was Ruben Apodoca, a great Disney assistant animator, who taught us basic animation. Vince and his pal Bob Zamboni, came down to the school many evenings to visit Ruben and hang out with us neophytes and talk pro animation. Us kids were always so flattered and happy to be visited by real working cartoonists. Vince could be quite cutting and withering in his criticism of our drawings, he often told me, “You’ll never make it.” I think around the time I completed my senior film at Chouinard, “Mike Mouse in ‘City Life’”, Vince started to revise his opinion of me and we got to know each other better. When I got started on staff at Spungbuggy Works and then went free-lance, I saw Vince more as we often bid on the same jobs. He invited me over to his ramshackle apartment near Normandie street in Hollywood, where he showed me his wonderful collection of old cartooning books, comic strips he had saved, his old time radio tapes and his old records of bands like the Coon-Sanders Night Hawks and the early records of the R. Crumb Cheap Suit Serenaders. Vince introduced me to the first old time radio I ever heard, sparking a life-long love of the sounds. I learned little tidbits of information about Vince’s life, he was born in Brisbane, Australia. He had gone to school there and had to wear a school uniform with a little straw hat every day. He still had that straw hat, it meant a lot to him. Vince was a great collector and saver of things. Vince loved old books and introduced me to many old book and antique stores in the Los Angeles Area. We made many trips to Long Beach to visit Richard Kyle’s Graphic Story Bookshop, and sometimes stayed for 5 hours in the Acres of Books store, the biggest book store in Long Beach!
Vince had a great affection for the culture of the early twentieth century in the United States. He loved old cartoons, two-reel comedies, serials, comic strips, Carl Barks, old time radio, old time country music, jazz, many things. His love of serials emerged in his student film: “Dr. Octopus”, or as he called it, “Doc Oc”. The 20 minute picture parodied the silent and sound serial chapters of the 1920s and 30s; filmed in live action on 16mm film, but edited on a video system, then transferred back onto 16mm film, which gave it a primitive kinescope look. The dialog was over the top, and a lot of the scenes were “undercranked” to give a slightly sped up look to the action. The lovely Sylvia Dees, who was an instructor in camera techniques at Chouinard, played the heroine, who was abducted by Doctor Octopus on board the Angel’s Flight trolley ride in downtown Los Angeles. Vince filmed this sequence while Angels’s Flight was still in it’s original location below Bunker Hill. The trolley was torn down shortly after Doc Oc was made. We often ran 16mm film shows at Vince’s house in the 1970s and 80s, and Vincent delighted in “torturing” his guests with Doc Oc.
I got to know his first wife, Pot (Theresa) Davis. Her nick-name was Pot because she was a talented ceramicist and master of the potter’s wheel. She made wonderful cartoony clay sculptures like “Mickey Duck”, a hybird of Donald and the Mouse with a rubber tail planted into his clay behind. Pot, Vince and I usually went to the San Diego Comic-Con together every year at the El Cortez hotel. I usually had no money for hotel rooms, so Vince and Pot let me sleep on the floor in their hotel coat room.Vince knew so many people through his love of comic books, especially Bob Sidebottom and Bud Plant, who Vince used to call “Pud Blant”. He liked to reverse letters on famous people’s names, such as “Cob Blampett” and “Juck Chones”. It was just another way that Vince had of taking the pomposity out of fannish worship of big-time cartoonists. Vince never took anything too seriously, especially cartoonists, yet, he secretly was an avid fan. He really loved Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson. I think he was secretly thrilled to meet Carl Barks at the Comic-Con; he might have gone to visit Carl on his own, I don’t remember now. Vince’s irreverence often offended the devout, and probably lost him some friends.
Vince was quite physically active in the early years that I knew him. He loved to play handball, and was quite good at it, until he fell and injured his knee. He owned and loved to ride horses, I went riding with him a few times through Shadow Hills, which is horse country. He lived right across the street from a big feed and tack store and knew many of the horse owners in his neighborhood. He even dated a female jockey for awhile. In the early 1980s, Vince went to Tokyo Japan to work with the Toei company. They were sub-contracting animation production on “The Gallavants” TV series for Murakami-Wolf, and Vince was the animation director. He went over to Japan and back many times, and that’s where he met Hiroko. Hiroko came along to Los Angeles with him and that’s where Cathy and I met her. “Hiro-ki-o from Toki-yo” was how Vince first introduced her to us. She was (and still is) very tiny, cute, with very long dark hair, actually shorter than Vince (did I mention that Vince was barely over 5 feet?). In 1985, Vince con”vince”d us to visit Hiroko and himself in Tokyo. We stayed in Vince’s small apartment in Tokyo and were amazed at the ambiance of the city. You could buy whisky out of vending machines! You could buy futuristic watches and radios! You could buy steamed squid and octopus from sidewalk vendors! You could see Vincent grab Hiroko and turn her upside down! One thing that was hard to find in Tokyo was thrift stores, the Japanese don’t like to wear used clothing. We found one, and I bought a red jacket from them which I still have. Vince and Hiroko seemed to like each other a lot and loved to laugh at the same things. Okonomiaki was one of their favorite dishes in Tokyo restaurants. They even taught us a few Japanese words, such as “Domo Arigato”. We had such a good time with them, taking showers in the apartment’s very small tub, seeing great piles of manga stacked like cord wood in the apartment building’s hallways and seeing the actual miniature Tokyo buildings that Godzilla smashed underfoot next door to the Toei Doga studios.
As the years went by, Vince put on a bit of weight, due to his bad knee. At a long-ago picnic, he confided in me that he feared he hadn’t long to live, he was starting to lose kidney function. His kidney deteriorated to the point that he had to go on dialysis for a short time every night. Hiroko and Vince liked to travel to a little mountain town named Julian every winter and Vince used to play cards with us there while hooked up to the dialysis machine. Luckily, the machine wasn’t much bigger than a Sony Betamax VCR, so he could take it with him. At last, Vince received a new kidney from a donor, and was able to free himself from the machine for several years. His outlook brightened a bit, and he regained some of his old acerbic wit. He used to invite Cathy and I over to his house (a wonderful old place made of big stones) each year on my birthday, with dinner provided by the charming Hiroko who could make a really delicious Shabu-Shabu. How sad it was when Vince’s other kidney started to fail, and he got weaker again. We were returning from a birthday dinner a few years ago at a Shadow Hills restaurant. When we got to Vince and Hiroko’s house, he was so weak that I had to lift him out of the car. I was amazed how light and small he was compared with the rather portly clown of not so many years ago. The last few years of his life saw Vince in and out of the Cedars/Sinai hospital in West L.A., dealing with his continuing renal failure. His longest stay was about 6 weeks. I went to visit him at Cedars and found great changes in my friend, he was no longer able to talk very well or breathe very well. He didn’t laugh much and was pretty down. About all we could do was watch old Andy Williams shows on the hospital TV, but I still enjoyed his company. Then in May of 2009, Vince and Hiroko decided that he wasn’t well enough to accept another kidney donation, even if one became available, so Vince removed himself from dialysis and died at home under Hiroko’s care on May 6th, 2009. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of him, and often reflect on things he said to us. Vince could get very reflective and wise as well as be the clown. He always used to say, “Who Cares? Nobody Cares”, when it came down to permission to do something. It was his way of making us feel better about trying new things, about encountering the unknown, and dealing with impossible or unfair situations. “Nobody Cares” means that it’s OK to go to Tokyo, to pilot a plane, play handball, ride a horse, be a cartoonist and make endless fun of the gullible and the witless. “Who Cares?” Vincent, we do. We miss you, old friend.
I’m going to conclude the post by continuing the comics reprints from last time. Vince really loved Krazy Kat, so I’m doing this in honor of him. See you next time.
Flip-Flap
Sorry, Readers! I’m working on a very large post, but it requires approval from a dear friend, and I want to give her time to respond. So here is the promised Marty Taras’s “Flip-Flap and the Crying Hyena” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, Feb. 1947 issue. This comic came out a year BEFORE the Famous Studios cartoon “Flip-Flap” was released (Feb. 13, 1948). I. Sparber was the credited director, but I’ll bet that Marty was a key artist on it, both story and animation. This story has nothing to do with the cartoon, but tells about an incident in Flip-Flap’s life AFTER he goes to the zoo. The cartoon story dealt with the seal’s origins in the North Pole. Part two coming very soon.
In comic strips this week, MARVELOUS MIKE’s (4/1/1957-4/6) got a sure stock tip on a trucking company, in which Cliff Crump promptly involves Mr. Kimball. I hear George O’Hanlon’s voice every time I read Cliff’s dialog. Mike’s stock tip may not be such a sure thing, we’ll see next time. Krazy Kat celebrates “music week” (8/21/1939 to 8/26), but has to settle for canned music instead of live at the end of the sequence. This is brief, but maybe next time I will have approval for my longer piece, it means a lot to me, so watch for it!
The Night Before Christmas Pt. Two, aka “Not Even A Mouse”
Hi Readers! Don’t forget your mothers on Mother’s Day coming up in a few days. You know how Moms are, they really resent being forgotten on their day. Flowers, candy and jewelry are gratefully accepted, but I can’t figure out why a mother would want an ipod, a lap-top, Microsoft Word, etc. Most mothers I know are well across the Digital Divide from us, unless your mother was married at 13, or something. Trying to teach my mother how to operate an ipod would be nearly impossible. She wouldn’t want an mp3 disc player either, and they are relatively easy to operate. Flowers and a card don’t need batteries and don’t have to be plugged in to be appreciated, maybe the moms have got something there.
Here is the second installment of “The Night Before Christmas” draft:
Sc.30: Tom kisses Jerry in close-up.  Zander
Sc. 30A: CU of Tom embarrassed.  Zander
Sc. 31: Jerry kicks Tom and exits fast.  Zander
Sc. 32: Jerry jumps through the mail slot. Surry
Sc. 33: Jerry outside in snow, up with snowball. Surry
Sc. 34: Tom gets snow in the face, props furniture against the door, exits. Surry
Sc. 36: Tom gets comfortable on pillow in front of the fireplace.  Spence
Sc. 37: Field cut-in, Tom looks over to window and looks outside. Spence
Sc. 38: Jerry walks up and down in the snow outside, flapping his arms. Surry
Sc. 38A: Tom at fireplace, registers remorse, plops pillow over his head. Spence
Sc. 39:Â Â Jerry is just a hump under the snow now, walking back and forth. Surry
Sc. 40: Tom tiptoes over to the door.  Surry
Sc. 41: Tom watches the door from around the corner, but Jerry doesn’t come in. Gordon
Sc. 42: Tom comes into sc. fast, wipes frost from the window, looks out. Gordon
Sc. 43:Â Outside, Tom plucks Jerry’s tail from snow mound. He looks like a “Good Humor” ice cream bar. Tom shakes Jerry, and the “Good Humor” chimes are heard in the background. Spence
Sc. 44: Tom takes Jerry over to the fireplace and tries to thaw him out. Gordon
Sc. 45: Jerry thaws out in C.U., Tom puts him on a pillow. Gordon
Sc. 47: Jerry is groggy, comes to and ducks down in fright. Zander
Sc. 48: Tom grins down at Jerry self-consciously (ala Wallace Beery). He presents Jerry with a candy cane and draws back with a big bashful grin.  Zander
Sc. 49: Jerry licks the candy cane happily, looks up at Tom, goes into a frantic “take”. Zander
Sc. 50: Jerry stops Tom from lapping a booby trapped bowl of milk. He sticks the candy cane into the milk, a “snap” is heard, and Jerry lifts a very heavy mousetrap out of the bowl of milk with the candy cane. Zander (23 feet)
Sc. 50A: Tom looking at Jerry in friendly grin with his paws on his hips. Zander
Sc. 50B: C.U. Jerry looking at Tom, snaps the candy cane off the trap and exits. Zander
Sc. 51: 94 feet! Jerry runs into shot by his mousehole, lifts the Christmas Cheese off the trap with the candy cane, and listens to the clip on the mousetrap play “Jingle Bells” as the cartoon ends. Zander
This picture is a great showcase for Jack Zander. It remains the highpoint of personality animation for Tom and Jerry. You can probably tell that my notes this time came from the original draft. The working title was “Not Even A Mouse”, the draft was made on July 9th, 1941, most Hollywood Christmas movies were done in the summertime.
In the conclusion of the “Twinkle” story from Calling All Kids comics #7, you will note that the story ends with a plea for children to send “Friendship Boxes” filled with goodies to children all over the world, with Twinkle stickers on them! This must pre-date the “CARE Package” idea. Twinkle was working for world peace back in 1947!
In the strips this week, Marvelous Mike from 3/25 to 3/30/57 concludes the story of Peggy Kimball happily. Mr. Kimball runs up to his crashed car in the strip for 3/25/1957 and sees that Peggy is alright. The dialog in the last panel was cut off by the microfilm, the policeman replies to Mr. Kimball: “You’re lucky only your car was smashed!” Cliff Crump is accepted back into Kimball’s good graces when he lets his daughter off from all charges. A new story line begins as Mike becomes an expert on stocks!
Krazy this week from 8/14 to 8/19/1939 has a storyline called “No Jail, No Brick Week”. Kolin Kelly the brick dealer is the main one hurt by Offissa Pupp’s policy and takes it out on the Pupp. Krazy also throws a brick at Ignatz, but of course neither Kelly nor Krazy are jailed by Pupp. There is definitely unequal justice in Coconino.
I do a rare commentary on film collecting in the latest issue of “Flip”, the on-line magazine devoted to the “Lifestyles of the Hunched and Goofy”, edited by Steve Moore. To read the article and to see a strange animated image of yours truly go to: http://www.flipanimation.net/flipcover.htm . See if you agree with my bon mots.
Walt Stanchfield/”The Night Before Christmas” Pt. One
Hi Folks,
My friend Don Hahn has put together a two-volume set of books that took him almost 20 years to get published. It is called DRAWN TO LIFE, and comprises the entire set of “handouts” that our gesture drawing teacher at Disney, Walt Stanchfield, distributed to all takers every week in the late 1980s and 1990s. Walt was one of those rare art teachers who made figure drawing accessible to us “cartoonists”, by making the poses and the ideas behind the poses the point of the drawing lesson, rather than the fine points of anatomy. These were “gesture” drawing classes that usually used clothed models holding props. It was OK with Walt to be as creative as we wanted to be with the poses, even turn them into Donald Duck if we wanted to, just as long as we caricatured the model’s gesture in a few well chosen lines. These books would enhance any art school that prizes traditional drawing skills, as the lessons transcend animation and give a lot of inspiration along with the lectures. Walt Stanchfield was an assistant and animator at Disney during the years 1949-1986. Before that he worked for the Charles Mintz studio in 1937 and Walter Lantz in the mid to late 1940s (the Fred Moore/Ed Love era). He started his classes in the late 1980s and taught through the 1990s, he died in 2000. Walt was amiable, sometimes he would draw a real quick little doodle right next to my labored-over gesture drawing, that got right to the heart of the pose in a few seconds. Sometimes, Walt wouldn’t get the pose either, and he was quick to admit his failures. He lived in Solvang, CA with his wife Dee and was a very good watercolorist as well as being a whiz at gesture. Walt was a very modest man, who played tennis nearly every day before work. He always described himself as “just a plodder”, nothing special in animation. If you praised him too much to his face, he could get riled, he thought compliments were insincere. I really learned a lot from him, though. If you get Vol. 2, there are about a dozen of my little sketches reproduced, even indexed! I never thought those little drawings would be in a nice textbook like this one, what an honor! These books have a cover price of $29.95, and well worth the tab, but if you lurk about Amazon, etc., you can probably grab a copy or two off for less. The great Focal Press of England is the publisher, they also did the little paperback “How To Cartoon” by John Halas and Bob Privett, in the late 1940s, I believe. These books deserve a space in any art school library, and deal with drawing, gesture, tangents and acting among a lot of other things. Get them, or just read them, you’ll be glad you did.
Here is the first part of a draft for the Tom and Jerry cartoon: “The Night Before Christmas”, see if you agree with it:
1. Fade in Exterior, Tom and Jerry’s Home–No Anim.
2. Dissolve to shot of fireplace—-Jack Zander
3. Cut to C.U. of Trap at Hole——Zander
4. Cut to Packages Under the Tree—–Zander
5. Cut to Candy Cane hanging on Tree— George Gordon
6. Cut to Doll’s Rocking Chair—————-Gordon
7. Cut to Stuffed Toy Lion———–Gordon
8. Cut to Jerry in Lion’s mane, he jumps—-Gordon
9. Jerry lands on Tom——-Gordon
10. Jerry runs from Tom—Cecil Surry
11. Pan of Jerry in Light Socket—-Surry
12. Dissolve to Jerry running———Bill Littlejohn
13. Jerry in line with toy soldiers——–Littlejohn
14. Tom at end of soldiers line———Littlejohn
15. Perspective shot of Jerry in Line—-Littlejohn
17. Jerry in line, Tom enters——Littlejohn
19. Tom at Railroad Crossing——–Surry
20. Perspective shot Jerry on Train———Surry
21. Pan of Tom———–Gordon
22. Tom puts on boxing glove———Gordon
23. Tom runs around tree to Jack in the Box——–Gordon
24. Boxing glove on spring—-Gordon
25. Pan shot with mistletoe———Zander
26.  closer shot of mistletoe and Jerry———-Zander
27. close up of Tom acting defiant——–Zander
28. Repeat of Sc. 26——–Zander
29.  Tom in coy poses (modelled on Mickey Rooney’s gestures)——Zander
We’ll continue on from here next week, let me know what you think.
This week in comics we have the next two pages of “Twinkle, the Star who Came Down From Heaven” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, any clues on who might have done the art? I love the relative sizes of Twinkle and the Earth’s Moon in the second page, I’m a sucker for fireflies in Japanese lanterns too. In MARVELOUS MIKE this week from 3/18 to 3/23/1957, Peggy Kimball is a big part of the action. It is revealed to her Dad, Mr. Kimball that she is the leader of the car “thieves”. Mike overhears her confession as he eavesdrops on her telephone conversation while she “babysits” him. Krazy Kat this week is from 8/7 to 8/12/1939. Edgar Bergen must have been on the radio in Garge’s house as he concocted this story of Ignatz making his brick talk through ventriloquism. A whole week’s worth of strips follows “starring” the brick. As always, I would love to hear your comments, see you next time.
Â
Salt Water Tabby Part Two, Twinkle
Hello readers! This week I’m featuring Part Two of my draft to “Salt Water Tabby“:
Jerry running, Tom in with bucket, plops it over Jerry, takes it off revealing bucket-shaped sand pile, Tom up with shovel, slices off chunks of sand pile rapidly, no Jerry, Tom digs in sand fast, sand comes in on top of him from screen right–Lah
Jerry digging sand with shovel fast, covers Tom in hole, Jerry jumps on sand to compact it, jabs shovel handle in sand, Tom’s head out of sand, Jerry lets the shovel slam into Tom’s face, exits–Lah
Jerry runs in, jumps in basket, Tom in, looks around, gets banana out of basket–Muse
Tom peels banana, revealing Jerry hiding inside peel, Tom looks at him, Jerry snaps catch on beach umbrella, snaps on Tom, Jerry opens little patch on umbrella, jumps out left–Muse
Jerry jumps into soda bottle, stuck, Tom runs in, grabs bottle(?)
CU Tom shakes bottle, truck in to Jerry-(?)
CU Jerry shoots out of bottle (?)
Jerry tumbles through air, hits clam shell in water, opens shell, mad, grabs sea weed and burnt stick–(?)
Jerry throws seaweed over pylon, draws eyes on pylon with burnt stick–(?)
Tom grabs sandwich and chicken leg from picnic basket, hears yell for help, looks right–Lah
Jerry yelling by disguised pylon–Lah
Tom does heroic antic., runs out, right–Barge
Tom runs, dives to pylon–Lah
Tom smashes head first on pylon, wave in, pan over, wave recedes revealing Tom with a big lump on his head–Lah
Tom runs on pan–Lah
Jerry jumps on bucket, reaches up to toy sea horse, unfastens catch on air intake, sea horse flies off right fast–Lah
Tom stops run, open mouthed take, swallows horse, air propels Tom off right fast, suit comes off-Lah
Tom sails to and from camera in the air as sea horse deflates inside of him–Lah
Jerry hides in Tom’s bathing suit–Lah
Long shot, Tom flies up in air–(?)
Tom runs out of air, starts to fall, long vertical pan–(?)
Tom hits the water, Tom up our of hole in the sand on re-inflated sea horse’s back, does take screen left–Lah
Jerry sails away in basket, using Tom’s suit for a sail–Lah(?)
As you can see, there are 7, possibly 8 scenes that I can’t positively identify. Especially the “soda bottle” sequence, students?
This week in comics, I present “Twinkle, the Star That Came Down From Heaven” from CALLING ALL KIDS #7, February 1947. I first encountered the character in the old HUMPTY DUMPTY’S MAGAZINE in the 1950s, it was only later that I found out the character goes back to 1945. He was always published by Parent’s Magazine, since they did both CALLING ALL KIDS and HUMPTY DUMPTY’S. I have a crude photo of a couple of pages from a Twinkle story of 1959 in HUMPTY’S, so that the styles can be compared. The Twinkle I used to read, was much more like a children’s book, very stylized, black and white drawings with captions. The original Twinkle was very much a 1940s Funny book, looking to be a production of an East Coast comics “shop”. This Twinkle story looks very much like a Famous Studios animator drew it. In coming weeks, I will re-print a story that Marty Taras drew for this issue of CALLING ALL KIDS, as well. Twinkle was a little God, who came down from Heaven to solve the little problems of the insect and animal cast. I think the design for Winky Dink was stolen from Twinkle, both star-headed characters. If any of you cartoon scholars can guess who drew this Twinkle story, let me hear from you.
This just in, I noticed that Elliott A. Caplin was the Publisher of CALLING ALL KIDS comics! Elliott Caplin was Al Capp’s brother, and later published Toby Comics, and wrote several long-lived daily comic strips such as Abbie N’ Slats, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Big Ben Bolt, Dr. Kildare and even wrote Little Orphan Annie for a time after Harold Gray passed away. It’s interesting that the caterpillar’s name in “Twinkle” is Eliot, maybe Elliott Caplin wrote this story and slipped himself in disguise into the action! Perhaps Elliott worked on CALLING ALL BOYS, CALLING ALL GIRLS and POLLY PIGTAILS, which were all magazines that Parent’s published featuring comics. They were all out in about the same span of years, 1946-1949, except CALLING ALL GIRLS dates back to 1941. If anyone can check their copies for his credits, let me know, I don’t have any issues of the other Parent’s Magazine comic books.
      As you know from the comments on last week’s post, MyToons.com is no more. I received two one-line emails from them the night before they closed, one saying that they were closing down, the other saying that my check was in the mail. To their credit, I did receive a check, for four dollars. We had about 7 paid hits, thanks to all of you who tried it. I actually am very sorry to lose MyToons, not so much for the money it generated, but because of the advertising and web presence it had. They really did a LOT of advertising and promotion. Greg Ford and I are considering other options for “It’s ‘The Cat'” on the Internet. If any other streaming cartoon sites are around, paid or not, and if you are interested in “It’s ‘The Cat'”, please let us know.
    In comic strips this week, Marvelous Mike (3/11 to 3/16/1957)’s dad Cliff finds out that Mr. Kimball’s daughter Peggy is a juvenile delinquent who swipes Kimball’s car and drives recklessly all over town. Of course poor Cliff is fired by Mr. Kimball for telling him about his daughter’s split personality. Mike seems to have the solution, see the next post! Krazy Kat (7/31 to 8/5/1939) is mostly about the “Bird on Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk’s Hat”. The bird scandalizes both Ignatz and Offissa Pupp, in a sequence that seems to hark back to old time melodrama. Walter Lantz based one of his Nellie “Mello-Drama” cartoons on the Bird on the Hat theme, titled “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat”. As always, thanks for your comments and support, folks. I really appreciate hearing from you.
“Salt Water Tabby” Draft, Pt. One
Hello Readers, I apologize for the long gaps between posts lately. I’m getting some nice mail regarding Little Grey from old friends like Bill Warren and David Gerstein. Milt Gray gave me a hopeful message verbally: “Someday another kitty may come along.” A cat that needs you is the best kind of cat to have, and that’s certainly what Little Grey was.
Here is part one of my draft to “Salt Water Tabby”, I’m pretty sure about the scene IDs in the first part, in the second there are a few gaps. We’ll get around to that next time:
Salt Water Tabby–Barge, Lah, Muse credited
Tom comes out of Beach Club House in red suit, closes door pinching suit, runs out–Lah
Tom tries to dive into ocean, suit stretches, pulled back to Club House–Lah
Tom crashes into Club House, making hole in the door, runs out again on long pan, dives onto dry beach as tide goes out, swims in junk lying on beach, tries to get water out of his ear, runs out, junk dripping from inside his suit–Lah
Tom jogs past “Toodles”, girl cat, falls into trash container–Muse
Tom slides into shot with grapefruit on his head, tips it to Toodles like a hat–Muse
MCU Tom sips Toodles’s soda, grabs her hot dog–Muse
CU Tom eats hot dog with typewriter sound efx.–Muse
MCU Tom antics., lies in Toodles’s lap, hit by tomato, banana, looks left, pan over to basket, Tom into shot with shovel–Muse
CU Jerry eats bologna from sandwiches, grabs hard boiled egg–Muse
CU Jerry throws eggs and olives at Tom, forming an extra set of “eyes”–Muse
CU Jerry chews celery in Tom’s hand,.taking bites out of his finger, Tom yells–Muse
Jerry runs on pan, hides in rocks, Tom in, reaches into rocks–Muse
CU Tom grabs crab, crab nips his whiskers off–Barge
Tom tries to run away, crab pinches his tail–Barge
CU Tom up in pain, exits fast–Barge
Tom runs behind rock, looks at tail, it’s cut like paper dolls–Barge
Jerry runs up beach umbrella handle, steps on catch–Barge
Umbrella closes on Tom–Barge
Jerry exits Tom’s pants, runs on pan to crab, crab tries to pinch him, both run out left–Barge
Jerry pursued by crab, in cycle–Barge
Jerry holds up Tom’s trunk leg, crab runs up his trunks, snaps him four times in the rear–Barge
Tom and umbrella flie up in the air, come down on tip–Barge
CU crab opens rear of Tom’s trunks like beer can with claw, crab hops out of shot–Barge
Jerry out of basket with soda pop, runs into Tom, Tom pops off bottle cap, puts it on Jerry’s head–Ray Patterson
Jerry feels his way with cap over his eyes–Muse
Jerry trips over crab’s claw, uses it to get bottle cap off his head, crab almost snaps him, exit–Muse
Jerry runs behind picnic basket, looks screen right–Lah
Tom takes sandwich from Toodles–Muse
Jerry runs in with clam, puts it in the sandwich–Muse
CU Tom bites sandwich with clam in it, teeth break off–Muse
Tom giggles to Toodles, tries to nonchalantly swallow the sandwich with effort–Muse
CU Tom with broken teeth–Muse
Jerry runs over with bucket of sand, no suit on–Muse
Tom spoons sugar into coffee cup, truck into sugar bowl-Muse
Jerry with suit on, subs sand for sugar, puts extra shovel of sand in coffee-Muse
CU Tom drinks sandy coffee, spits it out–Muse
Jerry scoops salt water in bucket from ocean, runs on pan–Muse
Tom choking, Jerry in with bucket, Tom grabs bucket, drinks, spits it out in Toodles’s face–Muse
The Jim Tyer text illo is from LAFFY-DAFFY COMICS #1. None other than Art Spiegelman has borrowed my copy to scan for an upcoming book called “RAW: Junior”, I assume it’s a collection of comics originally aimed at children. Watch for it.
In comic strips this week we have MARVELOUS MIKE from 3/4 to 3/9/1957. Cliff has a conflict of interest as a working judge and employee of Mr. Kimball. It seems a pal of Kimball’s needs a ticket fixed, but Cliff is too ethical to do it and seems doomed to lose his position with Kimball and Co. In the meantime, Cliff narrowly manages to rescue Mike and Merrie from being run-down by Mr. Kimball’s car! In Krazy Kat this week from 7/24 to 7/29/1939, we have two days of Krazy’s grief over the lack of a “love brick” from Ignatz, the balance of the week Garge does mostly food gags, with watermelons and ice cream bricks.
Don’t forget our cels for sale on this site, www.itsthecat.com. I have had some so-so reports from customers on the viability of the www.mytoons.com site. It seems that it is quite complicated to download the “It’s ‘The Cat'” movie. I tried it, and the site requires you to 1. Register to get a user name and password. 2. Go to my window in the My Toons store and click on the “buy” or “add to my cart” link. 3. Pay the $1.99 with a credit card or Paypal link. 4. The “file” goes into a “digital safe”, which you have to re-enter your user name and password to get in to. 5. Click on the icon in your “digital safe” to download the movie file to your computer. 6. Save the file in a favorite spot on your hard-drive; I use “My Music”. 7. Open the file and choose a player. Not all of the players work, I can’t seem to play it in Winamp, but Quick Time played the movie without a hitch. Some of the customers can’t get it to play at all. I’ve taken this up with My Toons, as way too complicated for the average customer. This after all, is an impulse buy. Once the “nickel” is dropped, the customer should be able to see the cartoon IMMEDIATELY, preferably in a POP-UP WINDOW. Do any of you computer jockeys out there know if this is technically feasible? Write and let me know. I hope to hear from you.
Little Grey says We’re Up and Running! Go to www.itsthecat.com !
Hi readers! Thanks again for all your kind words about Little Grey, who is still very much in our thoughts around here. Here he is in mid-groom, looking very contented with squinty eyes.
Thanks to the expertise of our webmaster Adrian Urquidez and Top Producer Greg Ford, “itsthecat.com” is now fully updated and operational! Just go to www.itsthecat.com and click the “mouse” next to the word “gallery”.  There you will see an updated page of cel set-ups for sale in three different price ranges, with Sc. Three (the most requested), well represented. The shipping is included with every cel and a free DVD of the cartoon: “It’s ‘The Cat'” will be included along with the cel. If you go to “movies” (“Movies, we NEVER go to movies!”) on the gallery page, you will find a Quick Time embedded movie of the original pencil test from “It’s ‘The Cat” to entertain you as you select the cels you would like to purchase. This is probably the last place on the Internet where you can buy actual PRODUCTION cels from a cartoon, and not reproduction or so called “sericels”. Most of these cels are HAND-INKED as well as HAND-PAINTED, production methods and skills which are increasingly rare or little used. With each cel comes a reproduction of the BACKGROUND, and in most cases the original DRAWING from which the cel was inked. Help us continue to make short cartoon films, the first six scenes of our new short, “There Must Be Some Other CAT!” are almost ready for the production camera. Your purchase is appreciated by lovers of cartoons and cats everywhere. Thank You!
This week I’m re-printing an ad promoting the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comics which appeared in the Moberly (Mo.) Monitor-Index on March 7th, 1956. This is a rare instance of a newspaper actually printing an ad promoting a rival paper’s comic section. Both “Marvelous Mike” and “Reverend” were winners in a contest that United Feature Syndicate held to find new comic strips. I believe “Reverend” ran a little longer than “Mike” but neither strip proved to have “legs”. Our “Marvelous Mike” strips this week are from 2/25 to 3/2/1957. Cliff Crump (who increasingly reminds me of Joe McDokes in the Warner Bros. shorts), is appointed judge by retiring Judge Hartshorn because Cliff is a “good citizen”. We’ll see if he can resist a bribe. Krazy Kat this week is from 7/17 to 7/22/1939, the subject being “music”. There are a lot of puns on the words “suites” and “fugues”. The 7/21 strip has me baffled, can one of you comic experts tell me what “fugues” are in “Ken-tuggy” and “Tennis Sea”? I’ve heard of the “Tennis Sea Walts” to paraphrase Krazy, but not a fugue. I like the fact that in the 7/19 strip the pose of Ignatz hurling the brick is now so familiar that Garge can just draw Ignatz with his arm following through without even showing the offending missile!
We’ll see you next time, good readers. Please consider buying a cel, they make wonderful gifts, too!
Little Grey–From Box—(Sadly) To Bag
Dear readers, if you don’t want to read sentiment, please skip to the comics section. Otherwise: “He taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.” Lewis Carroll from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
Little Grey has come home. I found his little body out in the back yard, while I was preparing to cut grass a few days ago. He was evidently killed by a coyote. I dug a grave for him underneath the lemon tree, not far from the grave of Little Sister, another dear cat who was the victim of a coyote some years ago. That’s a photo of his final resting place above, next to one of my favorite pictures of Grey on our front porch, in his box with the red pillow. I also have included a picture which I have posted before, of Little Grey eating a well-earned meal, with his “catch” going unmolested. Grey was a good mouser and bird-catcher in his early years. For awhile, it looked like he was especially good at catching pigeons. Grey seemed to be coming up with a fresh kill nearly every day, until I realized that he was simply eating the pigeons that a neighbor had shot with his air rifle! As I posted last time, Little Grey was shy with a lot of people, but was never shy with me. He followed me everywhere, and jumped into my lap nearly every place I sat down, including the bathroom! Of course Grey liked to sit on my lap down here in the computer room, purring as I typed. He made me laugh every morning as he climbed the stairs, wide eyed and eager, with his paws taking the steps two at a time, then dashing into the kitchen and greedily chowing down without even looking up. This winter was quite hard on him, he was meowing at the kitchen and front doors quite a lot, sometimes very urgently. As I said last time, he was not box-trained, so we had to let him in selectively and supervise him. For the most part, Little Grey was used to an outdoor life, but lately he was slowing down a little and eating less. We always thought he could take care of himself in co-existing with the skunks, possums, raccoons and coyotes that live around here, and he did that quite well for a long time. Whenever a skunk would show up to eat his leftovers, Little Grey was smart enough to just sit back and relax until the black and white robber had eaten it’s fill. Sadly, he finally slowed down enough that a coyote caught him. I can still hear him meowing everywhere, his spirit is very strong. It’s especially sad in the morning without the little one sunning himself on the back steps waiting for breakfast. Cathy and I miss him very much.
Thanks Diana Rodriguez of the Hampa studio, Dave Nethery and Charlie Judkins for writing sympathetic letters about Little Grey. Your words mean so much at this time, I am very moved that you took the time to care! Grief is such a strange emotion, it just comes over me in waves. Little Grey was such a big part of my life that almost everything around here reminds me of him. No other family adopted him, he stayed near us for all of his life. I’m so glad he was with us for as long as he could be, and at least I know where he is.
“…who had died as he had lived, in absolute love and infinite devotion.” Charles Tazewell from “The Littlest Angel”.
Comics this week are “Pop Korn”, the conclusion from Coo-Coo Comics, #28, August 1946. The wolf is foiled by a loose board on the front porch as Pop happily finishes his detective story. Pop walking along with the rifle over his shoulder, towing a miniature cannon and animal traps strongly resembles Taliaferro’s Donald Duck poses. Pop even says “So..!” when hit by a scrap of paper, just as Donald would do. Even though the story is slight, I love the small town, Centerville atmosphere that Taliaferro conjures up so lovingly with his beautiful drawings.
Marvelous Mike from 2/18 to 2/23/1957 this week concludes the Mr. Kosno story, as the Crumps return home from their Florida vacation. I think that kids could really agree with Mr. Kosno’s line in the 2/20 strip as he reacts to Cliff’s corporal punishment of Merrie: “..how many times we adults mete out undeserved punishment to our children.” Of course to kids, almost ANY punishment felt undeserved, especially spankings! Corporal punishment really seems to have vanished from modern parenting, about the worst a child gets now is a “time-out”. My brother and I were usually careful to tow the mark and avoid the belt when we were kids. We’ll find out what the policeman wanted to see Cliff about next time. Krazy Kat is from 7/10 to 7/15/1939 and the story could be called “Sixty/Forty”. Offisa Pupp, Mrs. Kwak-Wak, Krazy and Ignatz spend the week discussing physics, Pupp running 40 miles an hour, Ignatz hurling a brick at sixty. The boomerang brick in 7/12 is novel, but I like the 7/15 strip the best, as the brick reacts to a “stop” sign.
Wherefore Art Thou, Little Grey?
Well, dear readers, I’m going to take a little break from the ballyhoo for “It’s ‘The Cat'” over on My Toons. There is concern in our house tonight for our dear friend, Little Grey, the outdoor cat. You see he’s been missing now, for three days. Little Grey’s been with us since 2004, he came in to our lives (my wife Cathy’s and mine) hissing, spitting and suspicious. He was very young, little more than a kitten, and evidently had been mistreated. Gradually, the power of food won him over, and before many months went by, he let us touch him, and he let it be known that he was a “lap cat”. Grey liked nothing better than climbing up on my lap, to doze and purr. I think he would have stayed in my lap for 4 hours in a row if I would let him. Little Grey must have been part Siamese, because he loved to “talk”. He would yowl for his breakfast and supper, and whenever we would stand around talking to our neighbor, Little Grey would sit close by our feet and try to join the “conversation”. Although there will never be a cat dearer to us than our cats Crispy and Little Sister, who are both gone now, Little Grey will never be forgotten. Crispy, who was with us nineteen years, was quite intolerant of other cats, and really hated Little Grey. As old as she was, one day she went on the attack and tried to scratch Grey. Little Grey could fight fiercely when he needed to, we saw him do it, but that day, he just rolled over and showed his belly to Crispy and that stopped the fight! Little Grey seemed to sense the social order around here and treated the senior cat with respect. That fuzzy close-up of him in my lap was a self-taken snap shot, that’s why he’s out of focus, but I think it’s a funny picture anyway. Little Grey has been in declining health lately, getting pretty thin and not eating very much. He is really a semi-wild creature, an outdoor cat, not box-trained, but really a nice, friendly kitty. I hope he got adopted by a caring family and will get some good medical care. We miss him.
     Comics this week are pages 3 and 4 of “Pop Korn” by Al Taliaferro from Coo-Coo Comics #28, August, 1946. The wolf grabs Pop’s food and candy, then takes the old goose’s Detective magazine. It looks like the wolf also bought up all the Detective mags at the local newsstand and is burning them in his stove so that Pop can’t finish his detective story! We’ll finish off this comic in the next post. Marvelous Mike this week, from 2/11/1957 to 2/16, continues the Mr. Kosno story. The dialog in the last panel of the 2/13 strip is a little hard to read, due to the darkness of the microfilm copy. Mike says: (to Merrie): “Go back to the hotel man and wait for me, dear sister—if my plan works, I’ll see you within the hour–” Mike stows away in the spy’s car, causing them to fear a federal rap, kidnapping. Thinking that they have the secret papers, they run out, leaving Mike with Mr. Kosno, but of course Mike has the real ones; more next time. Krazy Kat, from 7/3/1939 to 7/8, is primarily about a Coconut tree and the Coconino citizens who are bopped by coconuts dropping from the tree. Of course it’s mostly Ignatz doing the dropping and bopping. Remember, to see any picture larger, just click on the images with your mouse. I’ll be posting some more of my favorite pictures of Little Grey in the next few entries, after all, this is the Cat Blog. See you then.
“It’s ‘The Cat'” is on My Toons!
  Wow Folks! It’s taken quite a long time, but my cartoon “It’s ‘The Cat'” is now on the My Toons store! Here’s the link: http://www.mytoons.com/markkausler. If you fork over the princely sum of $1.99, you will see the cartoon at full frame rate. I think it plays at reduced frame rate if you just click on the arrow and try to view it for free. Very soon we should have cels for sale from “It’s ‘The Cat'” on this very web site! There will be 52 set-ups in all, mostly from Sc. 3 (the cat on the fence), but quite a few from other points in the cartoon, as well. My cat is rubbing whiskers with “Banjo the Woodpile Cat” by Don Bluth on the My Toons store, among many other cartoons available for paid downloads. So please pay, download, and erase, then repeat as often as you can! Maybe we’ll pay our negative cost back one of these days.
Did you know that the great Disney Donald Duck comic strip artist Al Taliaferro also dabbled in comic books outside of the Disney ranch? Well, here’s “Pop Korn” from Coo-Coo Comics #28 from August, 1946, one of the few stories Al was able to publish under his own by-line. Pop is a goose, not a duck, but his body shape and attitudes certainly suggest Donald, but Pop Korn comes off more like Grandma Duck than anything else. The wolf seems right at home on a rural front porch, not like Zeke Wolf at all. I assume Al wrote the story and inked it too. Let me know what you think.
In strips this week, Marvelous Mike (2/4/1957-2/7, 2-9) walks for the first time, and the Mr. Kosno plot thickens as the Crump’s room at the Miami hotel is ransacked. The strip from 2/8 was missing from the Post-Dispatch microfilm, but the continuity seems pretty clear without it. Krazy Kat is from 6/26/1939 to 7/1, and the week’s strips are all about “Boids and Bugs”, puns on things like “Bowl” Weevils, “Liar” Birds, and so forth. These play like gags Garge was doing in the earliest Krazy Kat dailies from 1913. The design of the Boll Weevil looks a lot like “Archy” from Herriman’s illustrations for the “Archy and Mehitabel” stories by Don Marquis that were published around 1939. Garge drew Archy and Mehitabel in several different designs over the course of the books he illustrated, the Boll Weevil design is just one of Archy’s “looks”.
That very crude drawing of “The Cat” at the top of the page is one of two drawings I have done on a digital “paint” program. It’s like drawing on a chunk of ice with another chunk of ice, so my control was not the greatest, but the result has a bit of life in it anyway, so I’m throwing it out there. Let me know what you think of the My Toons store! See you soon.
Welcome, Please Come In!
Hello everyone, (and I do mean ONE)! Welcome to the lonely blog! Come in and enjoy our comic offerings for today and the art gallery. Our painting today is by my wife, Catherine Hill and is currently on exhibit in the Contemporary Masters, Artistic Eden II show at the Pasadena Museum of History over on Orange Grove in Pasadena. Head over there for a fine show, featuring local scenes of San Gabriel and Pasadena, with work by the great Ray Harris, Jove Wang, Vic Riseau, Walter McNall, Donald Hildreth and many others. Cathy’s painting is an interior view of the Huntington Library’s art gallery with a group of art lovers enjoying the paintings. I especially like the subtle colors Cathy chose for the walls and way she painted the reflections in the gallery floor. You really should go over to the Museum, which was the Fennes mansion in a former life, and see this beautiful painting for yourself! You have until the end of April to do it.
I was asked to do a tribute to my friend Lyn Kroeger at the Afternoon of Remembrance at the DeMille barn on Saturday afternoon, Feb. 7th. I wrote about her in this very blog a few weeks ago if you recall. Unfortunately I ran a little long, it was hard to decide what to leave in and leave out in my speech. I did cut out a paragraph or two as I went along but that still wasn’t enough, I ran over 5 minutes. It’s frustrating to be hurried at these tributes, at least I was there and prepared. Many of the honorees didn’t have anyone to speak for them. The oldest person that was honored was veteran animator Al Stetter, who lived to be 100 years old! Maybe Lyn was not a veteran animator, but she was a very good assistant and a true artist, so I thought she deserved a good speech. I’m glad I could do it, I owed you one, my friend.
Our comics this week are “Dusty and Littlechief” by Bud Sagendorf from Coo-Coo Comics #4, the concluding two pages. The Japanese spy is socked and bopped all over the place but winds up more humiliated than hurt as they mail him to Washington D.C. as livestock! I wonder what Littlechief wanted the purple paint for? Marvelous Mike this week from 1/28/1957 to 2/2, continues the story of Mr. Kosno as he plants his secret information on Mike at the airport. Mike is already on to the plot in the Feb. 2nd strip, that brilliant little detective. Krazy Kat this week is from 6/19/1939 to 6/24, half the strips feature a continuity with Offissa Pupp’s Mechanical Stool Pigeon machine. It’s supposed to tell when Ignatz is in or out of “Jail”, but malfunctions in the 6/24 strip.
Go to FLIP!
Hi everyone! My wife Catherine Hill is the Featured Artist this month in the February issue of FLIP! FLIP is an on-line magazine devoted to the “Lifestyles of the Hunched and Goofy”, edited by the eminent animator, director and webmaster Steve Moore. Here is the address: www.flipanimation.net/flipiissue20.htm! Head over there to read an article which Cathy wrote about her painting methods and see many jpegs of her recent oil paintings. You’ll be glad you did.
Comics this week are pgs. 3 and 4 of Bud Sagendorf’s “Dusty and Littlechief” from Coo-Coo comics number four. This is pretty anti-Japanese stuff by this time, consider this was 1943 at the height of the hostilities between the Empire of Japan and the Allies. In this strip you get two stereotypes for the price of one, American Indian and Japanese. Littlechief is pretty easily fooled, and Dusty makes like Popeye on the second page when he knocks the Japanese spy clear across the page.
Marvelous Mike by Bob Kuwahara this week is from Jan. 21 to 26th, 1957 and gets into cold war territory when a new character, Mr. Kosno, stumbles over Mike at the airport. It looks like Cliff is going to be led into doing a little smuggling for the aforesaid Mr. Kosno, we’ll see. Krazy Kat this week, from 6/12 to 6/17/1939 features Ignatz trying to make Offissa Pupp’s jail a little more livable by turning it into an office, a hotel and an “Unfair Jail”, picketing it like a Prisoner’s Union member. This might have reflected the union activity in 1939, just before the U.S. entered into the second World War.
Stan Phillips’s Estate Sale
June 23, 2009
Uncategorized
3 Comments
Mark
Hi Readers,
Last Friday, June 19th, I drove out near Granada Hills to an estate sale I came across in the Pennysaver. It stated that it was the estate of an animator, with artwork, film equipment and 35 and 16mm films! The Pennysaver listed the wrong address on Darla Ave., but I could tell from the people filing in and out that I’d come to the right house. It was a typical Valley residence, ranch style, large airy living room and many small rooms to be used for bed and utility. It turned out to be Stan Phillips’s house. Stan Phillips had a company of his own for several years in Colorado called Stan Phillips and Associates. He made non-theatrical cartoon short subjects and commercials, mostly for local clients. He made WATER FOLLIES and A SNORT HISTORY in the early 1970s. Stan animated WATER FOLLIES (gags concerning water conservation) and Pat Oliphant, the famous editorial cartoonist animated A SNORT HISTORY (about DUI through history). Prints of these two films show up on Ebay quite often. Stan gave employment to a good friend of mine in New Mexico many times. Evidently, Stan moved out to Granada Hills eventually and worked on such TV properties as “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Madeline”, a Christmas special or two, and so forth. He subcontracted storyboards and probably timed out exposure sheets like so many animators have done. It must not have been easy to be a corporate soldier after heading his own company for so long. I never got to meet Stan, but I’ve heard a few stories about him, so I almost feel I know him. His house was full of artwork he’d collected, cels and storyboards from the TV shows he’d worked on, old Indian pottery, an old RCA 16mm projector, 16/35 mm films and old children’s books. Stan had a whole bookcase full of those, including some rare first editions of Dr. Doolittle and Oz books on sale for very little money. He even collected tribal masks from New Guinea; the same sort of thing that Marc Davis used to like. I finally found the films in the garage, being stood over by a very stocky and gruff looking guy (typical film collector), who wouldn’t even let me LOOK at the films. He just glared at me when I explained that I had driven a long way to see what the films’s titles were. “Don’t even THINK about it”, he grunted. He bought them all for $100.00, and they all seemed to be prints or “elements” from Stan’s WATER FOLLIES and A SNORT HISTORY, judging by a sneak peek I took. If Stan had prints of anything else, I’ll never know. I can’t understand collectors with that kind of greedy attitude at all. Film should be shared, it HAS to be run every so often or it develops Vinegar Syndrome and shrivels up and dies. The guy carted off the stuff in a hurry, maybe he slept with it underneath his pillow that night, who knows? So anyway, there is another obscure little chapter in animation history discovered by accident in the Pennysaver, just as I found Ollie Johnston’s estate sale in there some time ago.
      This week’s comics are “Nize Baby” from 4/17/1927:
Krazy is from 9/18 to 9/23/1939, this week the cast pretend to be “Little People”, not exactly children. Mrs. Kwakk-wakk goes back to an egg, and Offissa Pupp and Ignatz play hide and seek. In the 9/23 strip, Offissa quits counting in the hide and seek game to yell “Ya Come”. Is this how they used to say “Ready or Not, hear I come” in the 1930s?
In Marvelous Mike from 4/29 to 5/3/1957, Cliff Crump finds a runaway orphan who has escaped from Mr. Meadows’s foundling home. The orphan explains that they mistreat and SELL the orphans that live at the home! Cliff doesn’t believe the orphan’s story. Another mystery to be solved soon. Remember to click on the thumbnails to see them at reading size.