Mark Kausler’s CatBlog

Stan Phillips’s Estate Sale

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:

 Great Red Riding Hood strip by Milt Gross. “Nize Baby” was an offshoot of the “Gross Exaggerations” column that Milt wrote in 1917. The Feitlebaum family started in that column and were in fine slapstick form in the weekly comic page that started on Jan. 2, 1927. You’re seeing strips from early in the run here. It only ran about two years, until Feb. 17, 1929.

 

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.