Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Chovie Clipper Hoists Anchor

Gosh, it’s been a long time since the Catblog was updated. Here’s a watercolor I did down in San Pedro at the old Ports O’ Call center. It was a charming place in those days, many quaint buildings, seafood restaurants and views of cargo and pleasure craft waiting at the docks. Several times, Cathy and I would start sketches of ships only to have them take off from the moorings half-way through the painting! The old Chovie Clipper didn’t disappoint me, she stuck around for her portrait and I had a good time painting her. The colors in the scan aren’t as pretty as the original. It’s 10″ by 14″, a little bit larger than I usually paint. If anybody wants it, just Paypal me fifty bucks with your address and I’ll send it to you. UPDATE: One of my wonderful readers has bought the “Chovie Clipper”! Thanks, Jenny!

Felix is from 6-5 to 6-11-1933. Felix gave Danny’s father’s pants to a hobo last time, containing the old man’s paycheck in the pocket. With the aid of a bulldog and a dinosaur bone, the intrepid little cat retrieves the dough and gets a big feast in the 6-10. Felix gets kicked, socked and pummeled as he bounces in and out of the house on an old bed spring in the Sunday page. This really feels animated to me, could have been a storyboard!

Myrtle is back! Originally appearing 3-7 to 3-13-1949, I love the Sunday page as the family gets their first television set. I remember our old black and white set from my childhood so well, in fact I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a set of some kind. Yes, there were a lot of fights on the air, but also some great old cartoons and comedies, and puppet shows! Mrs. Smaltz’s cat figures in the first three dailies, teasing poor Bingo. She looks a lot like Hyacinth, who appears in the Sunday, but is not the same cat. I like the feeling of sadness in the 3-12 daily, as Samson discovers the body of a dead rabbit in the bushes and they have a funeral for it. I’ve buried a couple of beloved cats and a poor dead bird or two, so this one has meaning for me.

 

A double helping of Kat, from 7-12 to 7-24-1943! Offissa Pupp standing behind one of Garge’s fat tree trunks has a pleasing design to it in the 7-15 to 7-17. The little touches of wood planks and potted plants  in the foreground of the 7-16 once again reveal that Garge considered the Coconino characters performers on a stage. The “Bam” and “Boo” talking tree gags of 7-22 and 7-23 are very silly, yet somehow still resonate in that offhand Herriman way. Who else could put over such jokes? 

We’ve been struggling a bit since the last post, with cast iron drain pipes from the upstairs bath tub developing a leak which stained the downstairs drywall with dirty wash water. The odor was not pleasant. I got tricked into paying more than 500 bucks for a company to do an evaluation of the water stained walls for asbestos content! What a rip, the guy who did the asbestos checking was here only a half an hour. He found no asbestos. A retaining wall near the patio outside collapsed (it was unreinforced), and we had to put up a new wall. Our wonderful handyman, Jaime Toscano did the work, he’s so good. The septic tank filled up with water, which turned out to be from a leaky galvanized pipe that was stuck in the middle of the tank. This pipe feeds a hose bib out back; what a lot of wasted water. My wife’s art gallery, the Tirage in Pasadena, is closing down after more than 35 years and we will soon be getting many of her paintings returned to us. The Tirage was a very good gallery, well run by hard-working folks, but there is a declining interest in fine art for purchase by the public. I’ll be posting a few images of Cathy’s paintings in future Catblog posts. Thanks for reading, don’t forget about us!

An Easter Drawing by Cathy Hill

My wife Cathy drew this somewhat grisly Easter gag featuring “Simon’s Cat” bursting with pride at his “catch”. If you haven’t seen the “Simon’s Cat” internet cartoons, head over to You Tube and search for them. They are all created in England by a chap named Simon. He writes them and does all the voices. They are animated on tablets by a small crew of young English ladies and gents. Cathy loves to see Simon’s cat and the kitten wreck the house in every episode. The latest one has Simon’s Cat scooting over a freshly waxed dining room table. It’s rare to see such split-second timing in computer assisted animation, and all the comedy comes from the visuals. They use a system called TV paint.

 

Krazy is from 6-28 to 7-3-1943 in this group. I’m not sure if this is the first appearance of Dr. Y. Zowl in the 6-28 or not, but Garge milks the name for all it’s worth. The Coconino stage is in clear evidence in the 7-2 as Krazy goes through a series of alphabet puns, only to be pelted by vegetables, bricks and bottles from the audience, while Offissa Pupp (?) cringes in the orchestra pit.

In the Krazy dailies from 7-5 to 7-10-43, Offissa Pupp breaks the fourth wall in the 7-5 as he chases Ignatz clean out of the “picture”. The Coconino stage makes an encore showing as Ignatz falls through a trap door in the 7-10. The drawings of Krazy continue to devolve, in the 7-10, note how strangely eerie the Kat’s eyes look in panels two and three. It puts the Kat into an angry and almost haunted mood leading into the play on words in the fourth panel. I also admire how Herriman works Krazy’s right leg into the shadow behind him in the second panel of the 7-9, as he anticipates hitting the vending machine.

This is a “bonus” post, courtesy of Cathy’s drawing, so we will continue Myrtle and Felix next time.

We cats thank you for reading.

Your Comics Page, 1-31-2018

Welcome back! Here’s a watercolor sketch I made in Bishop, Ca. a few years ago. I love the mountains and the horse property around there, the ranges are called the “Whitney Portal”, because the range includes Mount Whitney, which is the highest summit in the continental U.S., at 14, 505 feet. Bishop is just a little bit East of Lone Pine, Ca., home of the Lone Pine Western Film Museum and the Alabama Hills, where Hopalong Cassidy, Death Valley Days, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and so many old time Western features and TV series were shot. I want to go on a horseback tour of the Alabama Hills some day.

Felix helps Danny Dooit play hooky in the strips from 5-22 to 5-28-1933.  Danny feels guilty and Felix has a hard time getting him into the spirit of a day of fishing and swimming, then they meet a hobo who wants a “feed”. In the jungle, Felix runs afoul of an elephant, an exotic bird with long legs and an ape, before he wakes up from his dream with the help of the barnyard animals and a pail of water.

Here’s Myrtle from 2-21 to 2-27-1949. In the dailies, Sampson sets up a wired telephone network in Myrtle’s house with painful results for Freddie. I like the fantasy in the 2-24, as Bingo the dog “wakes up” Myrtle’s sleeping look-alike doll. The Sunday is a dream fantasy, as the Sun runs a relay race in a Technicolor landscape of Freddie’s imagination. This is one of Dudley Fisher’s best panoramic pages!

In answer to reader Daryl Boman’s request, I’m presenting a double dose of Krazy, from 5-21 to 6-12-1943. My favorite daily in the first batch is the 6-5, as Krazy tries to figure out where he came from, and Ignatz produces an ink bottle and pen, saying: “Figure It Out Yourself”. Garge does a bit of wartime satire in the 6-7 to 6-12 strips. Especially striking is the 6-9, contributed to the Catblog by Gerd Heinlein, as Krazy loses 8.25 of his lives in a fight with a “Super-Patriot”. Evidently, there were Patriots and Super-Patriots in WW2. If you watch “The Best Years of Our Lives”, directed by William Wyler in 1946, you’ll see a sequence in the drug store where Dana Andrews punches Ray Teal’s character “Mr. Mollett”, so hard that he crashes into a glass display case. The cause of the argument is that Mr. Mollett is skeptical of the reasons that the United States is in the war and it makes Dana Andrews (ex-Navy pilot), mad. This is a little known aspect of the WW2 years that Garge is alluding to here: Ill-will between “Patriots”, who were a bit critical of the politics of the war, and the “Super-Patriots” who were for the war, no matter what. The popular image of WW2, is that after Pearl Harbor, there was little or no criticism of the War’s raison d’etre, but there was a wider range of opinion than that. The whole “One life to give for my country” quotation comes from Nathan Hale, a Revolutionary War soldier and spy. In the 6-11, “Esne” is old English for “Laborer among the lower classes”. I hope this will keep Daryl Boman happy.

A milestone has passed, which seems to be little noted in comics fandom, Yoe Books and IDW publishing have just put out Popeye #65, the last in their series reprinting ALL of Dell’s regularly numbered Popeye comics from the 1940s to 1962. After that, Gold Key started publishing Popeye in Giant editions. I happen to like Bud Sagendorf’s cartooning and his approach to Popeye, Olive, Wimpy, Swee’pea and cast is second-best to the Elzie Segar strips of the 1920s and 1930s. The adventure in the almost book-length stories of the first 10 52 page issues are especially exciting and funny. Yoe Books is also issuing the series in hard-cover book collections. It’s kind of sobering that I was the only person still buying the series at my local comic book store here in Glendale toward the end. My store, Legacy Comics, kept ordering the issues for me, since subscriptions were not available. Yoe Books should really be commended for this accomplishment, as they carried on with Popeye, despite low sales. Comic Books have swung over to a “traced from photographs” look in the artwork. There is very little good cartooning left in “funny books”. So again, a tip of the sailor hat to Yoe Books for hitting 65 issues of “Popeye”. Maybe another publisher will take a chance on the earlier “Four Color” Popeye books some of these evenings. Now let’s all stroll over to the gym and watch the fat men play handball!

Felix Navidad, prospero Ano Nuevo y Felicidad!

 

Here’s a special Holiday greeting to all my readers from my dear wife, Cathy. She loves Felix and dabbles in studying Spanish, so the two interests got together and produced this delightful drawing, enhanced with watercolor. It was a big Christmas surprise for me, and I’m delighted to share the joy with all of you, and of course, Felix. Cathy thinks someone else must have used this pun, but for now we’ll say it’s her own invention.

Felix, from 5-15 to 5-21-1933, tries to help Danny in his arithmetic homework. Danny can only count to five, so this qualifies him to be a golf caddie, since no golfer wants more than 5 strokes a hole anyway. Felix is called a “black jinx” in the 5-18, and Danny is fired as a caddie in the 5-20 much to the delight of Felix, who was feeling neglected. In the Sunday, Felix throws a rock at an ape, thinking his head is a coconut. I like the shadows that Otto used in panel seven of this Sunday page.

Hyacinth the cat does a couple of bits in the Myrtle strip, from 2-14 to 2-20-1949. She appears in a mouse-hole gag in the 2-18, and pushing her kittens in a perambulator in the 2-20. I love Myrtle’s look-alike doll being pushed in a toy carriage by Sampson in the 2-20. Myrtle’s tomboy side emerges fully in the 2-19, as she is made to stand in the corner for showing prowess as a schoolyard fighter. If you had to pick a characteristic pose for Myrtle, it would be standing in a corner.

In Krazy, from 5-24 to 5-29-1943, an electric eel shocks Ignatz, who then harvests the eel’s electric output in the 5-24 and 5-25. In the 5-29, Offissa Pupp gets a hammerlock and a headlock on Ignatz before being beaned by a baseball that Krazy throws at his head. “Zup-Klup”!

 

As a late Christmas present, here’s another Story Book Record Company production, read by Walt Kelly. “The Three Bears” and “The Gingerbread Boy”. I put them up on Archive.org, so that you can hear them.  Here’s the link: https://archive.org/details/WaltKellyThreeBearsGingerbreadBoyComp . The records start abruptly and there is a repeating groove in the Gingerbread, but it’s so much fun being able to hear Mr. Kelly take all the parts and entertain us for a precious 2 minutes and 49 seconds. I hope we will have a happier New Year than 2017 has been, and that the repeal of net neutrality will not cut us off from each other, dear readers. See you soon, I hope, Itza and Mark

Merry C. From Itza, June and Me!

Every Christmas since 1975 or so, I have received a delightful card from June Foray Donavan. This year I find myself missing her more than I thought I did. I don’t feel like going to the Lynwood Dunn theater where our Shorts branch had its screenings, because June won’t be there anymore. I’m sharing some of her Christmas cards to keep her memory with us just a little while longer. On the back of the 2010 card, June wrote: “What a magnificent painting, Cathy! Sorry about the fire. Wow! It would destroy me! I had a (my fault) accident trying to avoid an oncoming car and smacking into a parked car. My beautiful Jaguar GONE, but what is worse–the DMV took away my license and I’m so dependent on friends and family. Oh well, I’m still well and vertical. Hope your project is successful in 2011. Stay in good health and have a bountiful 2011–Love, June” I’ve forgotten just which of Cathy’s paintings June is referring to, but you can see in her note, the beginning of June’s loss of independence, which I’m sure hurt her terribly. Her 2011 note read: “Dear Mark–I miss seeing you, life has been frenetic judging shorts, features (live action and animation) nights on end and getting to bed after midnight. Thanks be that these Oscar screenings will be over in Jan. Hey, I’m still working! This photo was taken at a Warner cocktail party for me as Granny in a new theatrical short showing in theaters before “Happy Feet”. I’m glad that you both are still painting. Are you selling them on Ebay? Have a terrific 2012. Maybe we’ll see each other more often, Love, June”

2014 was the last card I received from June, she was very busy in 2015. She really loved her dogs, and was proud of the biographic video: “The One and Only June Foray” that she helped produce in 2013. I love her little rhymes, she was quite a poet. She published a book of her poetry called “Perverse, Adverse and Rotten Verse” in 2015, maybe that’s why she didn’t send out Christmas cards that year.  It was quite the sardonic tome, revealing a cynical, yet warm, side to June Foray, through her poetry. Perhaps if we all have more Christmases, I’ll reprint earlier cards from June, and she will be with us a bit longer.

Felix from 5-8 to 5-14-1933 takes on a Gus Edwards feel this time. Felix has to educate Danny by piling up multiplication tables, demonstrating punctuation with a bee sting and my favorite gag, confusing a cow bell with a school bell in the 5-13. Felix is in the stone age again in the Sunday, he teaches a caveman how to sharpen tools with a grindstone, then uses the grindstone for a unicycle.

Myrtle is back from 2-7 to 2-13-1949, the dailies are filled with Dudley Fisher’s imaginative use of Myrtle’s alter-ego, a doll that looks exactly like her in miniature. In the Sunday page, the doll does a line of dialog in a balloon. I love the old feeling of wintertime in “Send Out The St. Bernards”, with the newfangled tractor taking the place of the horses.

It’s interesting that in the later Krazy Kats (such as these from 5-17 to 5-22-1943), Garge soft pedals the actual brick contacts with the Kat’s “bean”. He can get as comical a feel by just showing Ignatz reaching for the brick like 5-22 or 5-20. Or he can vary the situation as in 5-21 as Ignatz buys a loaf of bread for Mrs. Coyote (?) and her 5 ninas and ninos, which Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk thinks is a brick. I like the empathetic feel in the 5-21, as the gossip Mrs. Kwakk-Wakk is overcome by her conscience and exits the last panel sheepishly.

My friend Tim Walker keeps requesting to see one of my watercolor landscape paintings, so here’s one of Crystal Cove State Park, near Laguna, Ca.  This was done just a few years ago, after the funky little houses that line the beach were taken over by the state and turned into a state park, which happened in 2006. The cottages used to be privately maintained, now they are for rent on a lottery basis. They probably go for plenty. Cathy and I used to go out to the Cove before the cottages became state property, and we had the pleasure of meeting Roger Armstrong, famous California watercolorist and cartoonist and his wife, Julie. Roger and Julie were living in one of the cottages, and Roger gave me a tour of their cottage and showed me a beautiful original of “Napoleon” which he drew in the style of Clifford McBride in the early 1950s. It was a real thrill to spend some time with him, he and his wife spotted us painting and took to us right off. That was a memorable and golden afternoon. Mr. Armstrong had a bold sense of color and design in his watercolors that look a lot like another cartoonist’s work: Hardie Gramatky. Roger sadly passed on in 2007, but I can still hear his voice and see his friendly smile in my mind. Have a great Christmas and New Year’s, gentle readers. See you very soon.

Rudy’s Apartment, Porky Pig 101 and Comics!

In Myrtle this time, 1-31 to 2-06-1949, Dudley Fisher explores Women’s Psychology. In the 1-31, Sampson confides in Mr. Shmaltz on a New Year’s Eve park bench about Myrtle’s behavior. In the 2-5, Sampson is pulled in two directions as Myrtle starts behaving like a future wife, and Mrs. Schmaltz decides to order her son to run errands. Note how Myrtle’s doll serves as an echo of her mood in the 2-1 and the 2-5, sometimes taking on a personality of it’s own. In the Sunday, Gwendolyn, a regular “Alice Jolson” tries to impress Myrtle’s family and the neighborhood. Hyacinth the cat makes a rare appearance and comment. 

It’s Felix versus the new family cat, a white Persian, in the strips from 5-1 to 5-7-1933. Felix tries to keep out of the way by sleeping in the coal bin, in the attic (jig-saw puzzle style) and in the Umbrella stand. He allows his tail to be used as a razor strop and uses a balloon for a pillow.  Another reference to the “Jig-Saw Craze” is in the Sunday page, as Felix drops a stoneware jar, and the cave man can’t resist helping to piece it back together. 

In the Krazy Kats this time, from 5-10 to 5-15-1943 with 5-12 missing, Tigers, both lily and actual, dominate the action. Garge draws a terrific tiger, I think. I love the way he draws the nose, the stripes and the eyes. UPDATE: Thanks to Gerd Heinlein, we now have the missing 5-12, and it is an important strip for the tiger’s introduction into the story line.

Welcome to Rudy Ising’s apartment, circa 1936 to 1940, where he lived with his first wife, Maxine Jennings. It’s on 106 S. Kings Road, not far from Westwood. Here’s an ad: The development it was part of was called “Beverly Square” in those days. Here’s a view of the dining room of Rudy’s apartment, as it looks today: This lovely old building is unfortunately, schedded for demolition. The Office of Historic Resources of Los Angeles does NOT recognize Rudy Ising as an historic personage, and will not give Cultural Monument protection to the building based on his name. Doesn’t that sound like the fate of animators, once again? Consigned to the sub-basement of history, Hugh and Rudy were first-class, pioneering animators, yet they are forgotten today, since, they dared to compete against Walt Disney in the 1930s. In the digital age, just think of all the currently productive animators who will be nearly instantly forgotten as soon as the software changes and their technical edge disappears. ( UPDATE: ‘Scuse the rant! It looks good so far for Rudy’s apartment! Keep your pencils sharp!) I was lucky enough to be invited to Rudy Ising’s Benedict Canyon residence in the early 1970s. It was the biggest California Bungalow style house I’ve ever seen! It was an open floor plan in the enormous living room, with multiple levels to it, and the three little bedrooms were all grouped at one end of the house. The outdoor awnings all had Rudy’s initials sewn into them, and Hugh told me that they buried a lot of rare nitrate film in the back yard of Rudy’s house, including the negatives to the “Song-O-Reels” which they made in Kansas City. Rudy sold the property to Cher, not long after I saw the house, and she demolished it completely to build an Egyptian style edifice to herself. Rudy spent his final years in a nice little house in Laguna Beach with Cynthia, his lovely wife.  I visited Rudy there too, and we spent a long time looking over his great collection of books, many rare children’s volumes and first editions! I’ll never forget Hugh and Rudy, too bad their city has forgotten them.

I bought and watched all 5 DVDs (pressed!) from this new Warner Archives set, curated by Jerry Beck and George Feltenstein. It’s a lot of concentrated Pig, but these Looney Tunes have been a big part of my cranial soundtrack since the age of eight. Some of the music in these shorts just thrills me–like Carl Stalling’s use of “I’m Hatin’ This Waitin’ Around”, to open “Porky’s Super Service” (1937). The Warner 40 piece orchestra takes this little pop tune, originally recorded by Kay Keyser’s band, and makes a heroic urban statement  out of it, complete with auto horns and traffic sounds woven in to the score. “Porky and Gabby”, also from 1937, turns “Gee, But You’re Swell” into an ear-filling, tightly synced support to Gabby Goat’s attempt to swat a bee with a shovel. “Gee, But You’re Swell” also ends the cartoon as underscore to Gabby’s mocking laugh as he gets socked by a policeman and the “That’s All, Folks!” lettering unfurls across the screen to a mighty tympani crescendo. The score for “Porky’s Five and Ten” (1938) makes outstanding use of “Sing, You Son Of A Gun” (Johnny Mercer lyric), to back up a bit of Clampettian nonsense as a little fish, assigned to guard the escape hatch of Porky’s ship, catches the worm at the end of Porky’s fishing line with a miniature rod and reel of his own. The refrain of “Sing, You Son Of A Gun” is expanded and staggered musically by Carl Stalling as the worm struggles to free itself from the fish’s “worm-ing” tackle.

    A lot of cartoons are restored on this set that were censored on the old Guild Films TV negatives, like “Porky’s Road Race”, “Porky The Fireman”, “Christopher Columbus, Jr.” and “Porky’s Railroad”. Some, like “Fish Tales”(1936), still lack the shot of the little worm swimming into Porky’s nostrils, and the gag from “Porky’s Movie Mystery” involving a director, sitting in his chair on set is cut off as the scene abruptly cuts to the Phantom’s long coat as he ascends a spiral staircase.  I wonder if the “director” shot still survives on the original negative? We’ll probably never find out.

     Some of Bob Clampett’s funniest ideas are included in “Porky Pig 101′. The scene he animated for Tex Avery in “Porky’s Duck Hunt” of Daffy “exiting funny”, doing the Stan Laurel Jump (see “Putting Pants On Philip”), became a Looney Tune trademark–achieving perfection in “A Coy Decoy” as Daffy uses the Laurel jump to create a comedy pause and an anticipation for a wild chase with the bookstore wolf. Most of Clampett’s business, though screwball and silly in origin (see “The Daffy Doc”), seldom feels forced or imposed on the characters but seems to come from inside them. A few of Chuck Jones’s Looney Tunes such as Porky’s Cafe, are nicely animated (Ken Harris and Bob Cannon), but contain forced comedy, such as the cranky customer trying to blow the steam off his hot plate of soup, over and over again, and an attempt at mayhem as Porky wrecks all the tables in the Cafe as he tries to balance a tower of food trays running backwards. The horse in “Porky’s Prize Pony” is an appealing equine creation–but his attempts to get Jockey Porky’s attention while continually tripping over paddock obstacles, flying through the air and getting all four feet stuck in a bucket, are tours de force of animation, but at best “flypaper sequence” business, more typical of Disney than Looney Tunes, more Harry Reeves than Michael Maltese or Warren Foster.

    There are a few flaws in the DVD set, like the main title music from “Porky’s Tire Trouble” pressed into service over and over again to cover several missing title music soundtracks. I wonder why they didn’t just go to the 16mm Guild prints, which have most of the original main and end title soundtracks. Maybe fidelity issues? There is some interlaced video, but for the most part, I found that the transfers were film frame-by-frame with no loss of clarity and no obvious DVNR. This set is highly recommended, a rare chance to see all the black and white Porkys (and two color ones), mostly un-cut. This may never happen again!

The Catblog is restored! Comments Now Possible! Thanks to Internet Maestro Dwijadas Dey! If you have ANY problems fixing stubborn software, like I did with WordPress, a very talented guy named Dwijadas Dey, can help you fix it. You can contact him as a freelancer through www.upwork.com.

He lives in India, just what part of the country I do not know, but I will personally vouch for him. Thanks to Mr. Dey, the Catblog is back. He is very easy to work with, his base salary is $15.00 an hour, and he is a Linux specialist, among many computer skills. Go to UPWORK and get in touch with him, I’m sure you will be impressed as I was.

Calling GERD HEINLEIN! Can you help with my missing Krazy Kat daily? From 5-12-43? Maybe you can be the first to leave a comment here on the Catblog? UPDATE: Thanks, Gerd, for all your help!

Happy 100th June

Happy 100th, June Foray, and Goodbye
How do you say goodbye to a great lady who’s been a friend for almost 50 years? September 18th, 2017, would have been June’s 100th birthday! The more you study June Foray’s career, the more impressive her ability and talent for voice acting becomes. Among many performances, her greatest achievement might be her shared reading of George Orwell’s “1984″ with Newscaster Charles Morgan in 1975 for the Pacifica Foundation. It’s a warm, measured reading that captures the story’s sadness and underlying hopelessness, contrasted with the poignant love story of Winston and Julia.
June’s ability to read and act before a microphone, invest her characters with sincerity and reach across to an unseen audience, will make her performances live for a long time. Please go to this link: http://sperdvac.com/samples/SPERDVAC_Presents_80-09-20_June_Foray.mp3 and listen to June tell stories about the many fine people she worked with in radio from the 1940s on–Stan Freberg, Red Skelton, Smilin’ Ed McConnell, Bill Conrad and her husband, Hobart Donovan (also spelled Donavan). “Hobe” wrote and produced many programs during radio’s golden age: Lassie, Phone Again Finnegan, Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Gang, Fantasy and many more. After Hobart died in 1976, June introduced herself at an Academy function as “Mrs. Hobart Donovan”, recalling Janet Gaynor’s concluding speech in “A Star Is Born”. I was privileged to be invited to June’s house in Woodland Hills in the early 1970s and meet the talented Mr. Donovan. He wasn’t feeling too well at the time, but he seemed to like it when I told him how much I enjoyed his writing on the old “Andy’s Gang” TV show of the early 1950s. Andy Devine was hosting the show after Smilin’ Ed passed on. I enjoyed sharing memories of Froggy the Gremlin and Midnight the Cat, who were featured on the show. Hobart even wrote the Buster Brown comic books that the shoe stores gave away to promote the radio show. Froggy the Gremlin was heavily influenced by the Gremlin characters of World War Two, who gleefully smashed up fighter planes. Froggy usually just humiliated people. Smilin’ Ed originated Froggy’s voice and June usually did Midnight’s voice. She did Midnight’s voice (the cat could only say the word “nice”) for me the night I received the June Foray Award at the 2005 Annie Awards, an award ceremony to honor the animation community which was June’s special creation. I’ll never forget that night.
June had a special ability with cat voices. She was the voice of the villainous Lucifer in Walt Disney’s “Cinderella”, and she did a truly monstrous cat in the “Night Beat” radio show of 11-3-1950 called “Black Cat”. This guy was no Midnight, he was a real scary kitty. If you would like to hear it, go to otrcat.com and look for the “June Foray” disc, full of her performances on so many programs.
June helped keep the Academy awards for short subjects from being dropped from the Oscars TV broadcasts and oversaw the expansion of the shorts branch to include an award for animated feature films. She always struggled to lift animated films out of the low cast status they held in the American motion picture industry and at least partially succeeded. She had to get the membership stirred up at least twice that I recall to keep the Shorts branch alive, as the Academy periodically considered ending the Shorts award. The main reason the Academy still hands out shorts awards is to encourage film-makers young and old to work, and to achieve. June promoted that line of reasoning and persuaded the Academy Governors to keep giving the Award. As a result, the whole field of independent shorts is kept alive by the prestige of the Oscar, as the public sees few new short subjects, except at Festivals. June kept the door open for all of us.
June’s cartoon voices are loved by everyone, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Nell, Witch Hazel, who was originated as “Gorma” the witch on the Smilin’ Ed radio show, and many others. June’s witch cackle was funny and scary at the same time. For a little person (she was a size 3), June had size 20 vocal powers–she could go from a quiet “little boy” voice (Rocky, for instance) to a big thundering voice that reminded you of Marjorie Main (Magnolia Bulkhead). Sometimes, due to poor direction I’m sure, June could get a bit shrill, but she could mute her voice and give truly fine perfomances such as her reading of 1984, and various dramatic shows such as Suspense, Lux Radio Theater, Command Performance, CBS Radio Workshop and Sears Radio Theater. For “Smile Time”, a Steve Allen radio show of the 1940s, she was just “Junie, the Girl Friend”.
I saw June annually at the Academy shorts screenings and she kept me constantly updated on her favorite niece’s achievements in art and commerce. June never forgot that I was a fan of Laurie’s (her niece), and June was quite proud of her. Laurie even bought a cel from one of my “Itza Cat” cartoons; she’s a real friend.
June’s Oscar maxim was: “Think Oscar”, when considering an entry’s worthiness. I’ll never forget an animated submission from 2000, called “Ring Of Fire”, a weird Western cartoon animated by Andreas Hykade, which featured an object resembling a huge dancing vagina wearing a cowboy hat! June made a face, shook her head, and in a low register said “Think Oscar”, and marked her ballot. June was very tolerant of eccentrics, she acted with them her whole life, so she suffered many foolish cartoons gladly, and some were barely tolerated.
Occasionally, a Foray opinion would rise to the top; when Stan Freberg’s long awaited comedy record “Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America Part Two:The Middle Years” was released in 1996, June was disappointed. She thought that there was very little satire in the album, and that it was mostly a lot of “silly anachronisms”. Freberg attended quite a few shorts screenings in the 1980s, and often made rather loud vocal comments if a particular film struck him the wrong way.
Due to her short stature and young attitude, June never looked her age and never revealed it, until a 2004 TV Guide article gave away her age as 86. June took a really dim view of the reporter and TV Guide after that. She really felt betrayed. I only recently found out that her birth name was “Forer”.
Here’s the text of the last letter I received from June, on 6-22-2015, in answer to a note I sent her about the old “Hotel For Pets” radio show (on which she did not appear): “Dear Mark, Hearing from you was a most pleasant surprise. I was getting better and riding in my niece’s car a couple of weeks ago, we were hit by a nut on the freeway and I’m back and feeling rotten. Oh well, a couple more weeks in bed will cure me! About Smilin’ Ed–I was aware that he had a radio show (probably the Aladdin Lamp program-Mark) but I never appeared on it, nor had I ever asked. I was on his personal program (Buster Brown-Mark), written by my husband–we were married to other people at the time but beside ourselves to marry each other. I really had no idea about the animals (my question about Hotel For Pets) Please call me, and we’ll chat–Miss you, Best, June. Can’t write anymore!” She was writing in a very scribbly fashion by this time, but it’s the last I heard from her. June used to send me wonderful Christmas cards, a photo of her with a light hearted verse that she wrote each year.
We’ll all miss June very much, for her leadership in the Motion Picture Academy, ASIFA (which she helped to found), the warmth and humanity reflected in her natural speaking voice, and of course, my favorite of her characters, Midnight the Cat. I’ll give beautiful Midnight the last word on June Foray: “NICE”.
The photo on top was taken by my late friend Lyn Joy Kroeger in 1977 at the Academy Awards. That’s me on the left, June in the middle and T. Hee on the right of the picture. T. may have introduced me to June, he was so helpful to me when I first came to California, making it possible for me to attend Chouinard.

Here’s Dudley Fisher’s Myrtle from 1-24 to 1-30-1949. I love the fan letter that Myrtle receives from a reader in the 1-24, suggesting she take off her hat. Myrtle decides that she doesn’t look like herself and GLUES the hat back on her head! I love the drawing in the 1-27, as Susie faints in the last panel at the sight of Myrtle in “grown-up” clothes. There’s good fantasy in the 1-30, as the little doll of Myrtle jumps in the fish bowl and has to stand in the corner. The Sunday celebrates the days when the Sunday paper was loved by the entire family. Myrtle and Sampson are reading “Right Around Home”, of course.

In Felix, from 4-23 to 4-29-1933, Felix continues his Sunday adventures in the Bone Age, fending off a cave man with a “Heart of Rock”. In the dailies, Felix still tries to keep Danny Dooit from getting a big ego, and then someone sends Danny a pedigreed Persian cat! Of course Felix is jealous, and clobbers the pathetic Persian with a post!

Krazy is from 5-3 to 5-8-1943. World War Two shows it’s influence over Coconino in the 5-6 through 5-8 strips, as Ignatz, Pupp and Krazy try to define their patriotism by who is most willing to share. About the only thing they have in common is the Coconino Jail, so they share that!

Here’s what makes birthdays worthwhile, a birthday card from my talented artist wife, Cathy. She got the idea for these appealing feline designs from a tea towel she saw at World Market here in Glendale. She also made up a little basket for me with chocolate, a jar of honey, and other delicious comestibles. It was a happy day, August 10th, and she made it that way.
Hey folks, crying pays! I complained last post that I had no readers, and I got letters from five wonderful people! Chuck Fiala, Aaron Neathery, Edd Vick, Tim Walker and Don Yowp! Chuck Fiala, who is a fine cartoonist in his own right, likes the comics I post, but acknowledges that the rooting interest that the culture used to have in the art form is waning. Don Yowp, who puts out the Yowp Yowp and Tralfaz blogs almost daily, also encouraged me to put together a new post. So here it is, Chuck, Aaron, Edd, Tim and Don, just for you! I hope to be back sometime! Don’t forget to write to me at: kausler@att.net. It’s great to hear from my readers. The comments here are still disabled, any WordPress experts who could help me are cordially invited to try. Remember to click on the images to see them larger.

Your Comics Page 7-20-2017

Dudley Fisher’s art is up to it’s usual standard in the Myrtle strips from 1-17 to 1-23-1949. The Sunday page is a lot of fun, showing the whole family listening to a mystery program on the radio together, just before television started to muscle in. No DVRs either, or an interruption from friends wouldn’t have been such a big deal.

Krazy is from 4-26 to 5-1-1943, and once again the World War encroaches on the story line. This time it’s booby traps, I especially like the 5-1 as Offissa Pupp unwinds about 70 yards of fake mouse tail from under the box.

Felix is still time-travelling in the stone age in the 4-16, and being envious of Danny Dooit’s celebrity in the 4-17 through 4-22s. I love the way Otto draws the dinosaurs in the 4-16, sort of like Winsor McCay, but less of a feeling of bone structure and simpler shapes. The cave man reminds me of Elzie Segar’s drawings, and the greeting card made of stone is a harbinger of the Fleischer Stone Age cartoons of 1940.
I haven’t updated the old Catblog in several months, but who cares? I have no readers, and never hear from any of you. Of course, Itza and I would LOVE to hear from you at kausler@att.net, but I’m sure you’re too busy to write. My screening at the Union hall back in May was not too well attended, about 26 people showed up. In June I did a show and animation workshop in Ojai. I made the bonehead play of all time when I packed up all the film equipment and cables for the show, but forgot the FILMS! A friend loaned me a bunch of his 16mm prints, which we ran instead, and it was just as well as we drew a massive audience of ONE, a very nice lady named Dorothy. So as they said in the old Hal Roach comedy “A Lad and A Lamp”, “the small time’s not so hot anymore”. Not even the kids care about cartoons anymore, at the Union hall the only child in attendance spent most of the show in a corner punching his iphone.

Whelp, Been Ten Years!

It’s been ten years to the day, when in March of 2007, I started this blog. My posts are infrequent, and the blog has been hacked, disabling the comments, but what the heck, it’s still here! The oil painting is by my wife, Cathy. She calls it “Cat Party”, a still life study of various cat sculptures we have about the house, arranged on an outdoor table. Maybe you will recognize at least one of the party-goers. Next on the programme is Cathy’s wonderful drawing of her Mom’s favorite cat, Frosty, when he was a kitten, keeping an eye on the fireplace. It’s called “Frosty Watching the Fire”, and it’s one of my favorite drawings, used by special permission. As a third helping of cat artwork, I’ve appended my drawing of “DaDa” which I sketched from a Cat Calendar page. I like to build up textures and shading with a sketching pen, I especially love to draw cat’s eyes. They embody so much beauty and mystery. This blog post is dedicated to beloved cats we’ve known, Mangy, Crispy, Little Sister, Stephanie, Little Grey, Frosty and Misty. They are all frolicking by the Rainbow Bridge, remembered forever. Who knows how much longer this old Catblog will go on? Technically we are hanging by a thread, I recommend that if there is anything on the archives you want, download it and print it NOW before it disappears. I’ve got many years of Krazy Kat, Marvelous Mike and Felix comic strips on here, and currently we feature Felix, Krazy and Myrtle strips. May all of my readers continue to enjoy the blog, and if you want to comment, just write to me at kausler@att.net and I’ll print the best comments as an addendum to this post. Love ya! Mark and Itza

Felix from April 2nd to April 8th, 1933, good newspaper pun in the 4-8! Felix is jealous of Danny Dooit’s celebrity, but who is remembered today?

Myrtle from January 3rd to January 9th, 1949 The Sunday page is kinda crummy this week, it’s the best I could find. Myrtle has taken to carting a doll of herself around with her! Was Dudley Fisher trying to promote the idea of Myrtle character merchandise? I’ve never seen a Myrtle doll.

Krazy from April 12th to April 17th, 1943 Ignatz keeps getting jailed for “mutiny”, as Garge puts it. Krazy Kat tries to get Offissa Pupp to define what a “Superior” is in the 4-17. No Barker Bill Sunday this time or anytime soon, I ran out of them. Remember to click on any of the images herein, to see them larger.

Your Wonderful Comics Post 3-2-2017

Felix from 3-26 to 4-1-1933

Myrtle from 12-27-1948 to 1-2-1949, Her engagement to Sampson is broken off!

Krazy from 4-5 to 4-10-1943, love the artist joke in the 4-10, as Ignatz erases the brick with a BIG pencil!

Barker Bill from 11-7-1954, The invisible Puddy observes love triangle between Barker Bill, Phyllis the Strong Woman and Ali K. Zam. This may be the last Barker Bill Sunday I have, find out next time!

Your Comics Page 2-5-2017

Here’s Felix from 3-19 to 3-25-33

Here’s Myrtle from 12-20 to 12-26-48

Here’s Krazy from 3-29 to 4-3-43

Here’s the Sunday Barker Bill from 10-31-54 continuing the romance between Ali K. Zam and strong woman Phyllis Fezeek. I’ve decided to make my job a little easier around here and not write so many comments on the strips. If you want to send me any comments on the blog, just write to me at kausler@att.net. The reality is that since the blog was hacked, the stuffings were knocked out of it, but the archives are still there. Our 10th anniversary is coming up in March, providing we still have the blog by then.

Itza Christmas

Here’s a beautiful drawing by one of our most faithful supporters, and a donor to the cartoon short, “Some Other Cat”. It’s by Nicolas Martinez, of Chicago Ill. He draws Itza Cat just about perfectly, I love Itza with the candy cane in his mouth, looking like a striped cigar! Look at that beautiful texture that Nicolas put in to the wreath, it’s colored pencil on textured paper. Real classy, Nicolas, Thanks again!

Felix is from 3-12 to 3-18-33 this time. Felix and Danny Dooit have located Colonel Snooper’s abandoned radio and Danny’s mother listens in to Felix’s broadcast. I love the drawing of the windblown Felix and Danny in the 3-14, and the very effectively stylized polar bear in the 3-18. Savor these drawings of the Arctic in 1933, it doesn’t look that icy anymore. The Sunday continues Felix’s treasure hunt to impress his girlfriend, he goes to an undersea cave and is rescued from an octopus by a lobster boy!

Myrtle is from 12-13 to 12-18-1948, this week I love the 12-15 as Hyacinth the Cat makes one of her rare appearances, chasing the family’s pet mouse. Dudley Fisher does a very animated cartoon style gag here, as the Mouse paints a lot of fake mouseholes along the baseboard. I also like the 12-18, as Myrtle confronts her teacher, Miss Flunkem. Myrtle’s attitude in the second panel is especially appealing.

World War Two enters the Coconino County world (3-22 to 3-27-43) again as Ignatz, Krazy and Pupp play “Sentimentils” (Sentries in Kat Langwitch). I love the fractured Kat words, such as “retzkil”, “Weak kneeded” and “Paul Troom” in the 3-23 and “Migg-night” and “Moob Oba, Dollin'” in the 3-27. At this point, Herriman isn’t signing the strips, so you know they are his work.

Bob Kuwahara again does the “art chores” on the Barker Bill Sunday page from 10-17-54. Ali K. Zam is in love with Phyllis the Strong Woman and makes Puddy the Pup vanish beneath his magic hat. Trouble is, Ali K. Zam doesn’t know how to bring the beloved pup back again. Continued next post!

Here is yours truly, riding Balto in Ojai, Ca. where my wife and I were staying for the annual Film Festival. I got a two-hour ride on the gentle horse, we even went on a trot for a bit. I was the only rider on the trail that day. We went through a very dry Live Oak forest. It was the fastest two-hours I spent the whole year. I wonder what it’s like to ride for 4 hours, or 6? It would be fun to do a day’s ride with a lunch break some day. Remember to click the small thumbnails twice, and they will grow to readable size. Comments are ‘disabled’ for the time being, due to this blog recovering from a hack. Feliz Navidad and Prospero Ano Nuevo to all my readers!